Hey Guys,
I've had the ROG Delta S Animate for a short while, I'm still using my free trial on Tidal. I'm by no means an audiophile expert, but I do think I know good sound when I hear it.
I was testing MQA with the Armoury Crate sound optimization set to flat with the EQ off and the bit and sample rate set to 16 bit 44.1KHz, this is standard cd sound quality. Switch MQA on and you're listening at 24bits 96KHz at full decoder sound quality, which is generally found in high end home audio equipment. The reason for setting Armoury Crate flat is because you have no eq control when MQA is enabled, this keeps it a fair comparison. Testing it that way, I find MQA sounds significantly better and even louder.
As for the sound of the headphones themselves I will agree some songs could be lacking a little in bass, depends what I'm listening to. The mid range could maybe be toned down a touch, the highs are spot on as I can hear those crisp S's in most songs. My complaints could be how I want to hear it rather than how the master recording should be heard.
I use them more for games than listening to music though, the virtual surround is one of the best I've heard as there's little to no sound degradation when it's turned on. I can hear everything all around and above.
I personally haven't noticed any change with the new firmware update.
I've had the ROG Delta S Animate for a short while, I'm still using my free trial on Tidal. I'm by no means an audiophile expert, but I do think I know good sound when I hear it.
I was testing MQA with the Armoury Crate sound optimization set to flat with the EQ off and the bit and sample rate set to 16 bit 44.1KHz, this is standard cd sound quality. Switch MQA on and you're listening at 24bits 96KHz at full decoder sound quality, which is generally found in high end home audio equipment. The reason for setting Armoury Crate flat is because you have no eq control when MQA is enabled, this keeps it a fair comparison. Testing it that way, I find MQA sounds significantly better and even louder.
As for the sound of the headphones themselves I will agree some songs could be lacking a little in bass, depends what I'm listening to. The mid range could maybe be toned down a touch, the highs are spot on as I can hear those crisp S's in most songs. My complaints could be how I want to hear it rather than how the master recording should be heard.
I use them more for games than listening to music though, the virtual surround is one of the best I've heard as there's little to no sound degradation when it's turned on. I can hear everything all around and above.
I personally haven't noticed any change with the new firmware update.
Nate152 wrote:
Hey Guys,
I've had the ROG Delta S Animate for a short while, I'm still using my free trial on Tidal. I'm by no means an audiophile expert, but I do think I know good sound when I hear it.
I was testing MQA with the Armoury Crate sound optimization set to flat with the EQ off and the bit and sample rate set to 16 bit 44.1KHz, this is standard cd sound quality. Switch MQA on and you're listening at 24bits 96KHz at full decoder sound quality, which is generally found in high end home audio equipment. The reason for setting Armoury Crate flat is because you have no eq control when MQA is enabled, this keeps it a fair comparison. Testing it that way, I find MQA sounds significantly better and even louder.
As for the sound of the headphones themselves I will agree some songs could be lacking a little in bass, depends what I'm listening to. The mid range could maybe be toned down a touch, the highs are spot on as I can hear those crisp S's in most songs. My complaints could be how I want to hear it rather than how the master recording should be heard.
I use them more for games than listening to music though, the virtual surround is one of the best I've heard as there's little to no sound degradation when it's turned on. I can hear everything all around and above.
I personally haven't noticed any change with the new firmware update.
About the strange weaknesses of your listening experience... I, too made another comment here but decided to delete it since I was just feeling mega confused.
Do you know how MQA 'works' when there is a new signal under the MQA section of your device manager? Well, that was always 'N/A' for me when I used 'MQA passthrough' in Tidal. I thought I had a hardware renderer, that I can finally use that feature, and I DID hear stronger highs and lows in my MQA tracks since.
But that MQA indicator, once again, always showed N/A. It was only after I set it so that Tidal had exclusive control over the headphone AND turning off MQA passthrough, that the N/A signal disappeared in the device page... CRUCIALLY, this is when I may have noticed the seemingly reduced presence in certain frequencies that the headphone was playing after supposedly activating 'full' MQA rendering.
So then, what is the strangeness here? Well, I have found new information suggesting that MQA renderers can take on their job AND the software's job, therefore solely doing the job of FULLY processing MQA tracks...
I'd say that *maybe* Armoury Crate isn't showing the right MQA signal when such passthrough settings are enabled. Perhaps there is some inconsistency somewhere.
