The roll-out of MQA support for existing Pioneer home audio products will start at the end of October with availability of free firmware updates, which will be expanded later to further products. MQA is a pioneering method of providing high quality audio in a file that’s small enough to stream and download. All MQA encoded music is fully authenticated and captures 100% of the original studio performance.
For now, Pioneer will be implementing MQA support on its Network Audio Player N-70AE and N-50AE. These models support streaming audio, local file, and whole home audio and can be used as the hub for all high-quality audio experiences. Using the latest 32-bit D/A converters with channel-separated high-quality conversion circuits, the N-70AE network-player is an 8-channel Parallel Drive system using Sabre32 Ultra DAC (ESS 9016S x 2), fully-balanced signal processing as well as the Pioneer proprietary PQA (jitter suppression), HiBit32 (upsampling) and Lock Range Adjust function. The unit not only improves the sound, but also enhances music source selection possibilities, including DSD up to 11.2 MHz, and PCM up to 24-bit/192kHz. The N-70AE also supports sources over Wi-Fi, AirPlay, Chromecast and PlayFi as wireless options, and features optical, coaxial and USB digital inputs, and features a high quality headphone amplifier using the Texas Instrument TPA6120 IC.
The more affordable N-50AE is a 4-channel unit, skipping the balanced connections and the high-quality headphone amplifier circuit. The Pioneer Audio Network CD Player NC-50 and NC-50DAB add a built-in CD player and stereo amplifier with class D output stages and similar streaming options.
MQA music for Pioneer devices is available from various music streaming services such as TIDAL, and music download sites, such as Onkyo Music in the US, UK and Germany, and e-onkyo music in Japan. Onkyo Music is a leading Hi-Res digital music provider, which provides all downloads as FLAC files. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio format that compresses audio without any loss in quality.
Onkyo & Pioneer Global Site: www.onkyo.com
www.mqa.co.uk | www.onkyomusic.com
