Portable high-resolution audio player maker Astell&Kern has announced new firmware updates that this month add MQA support for the A&ultima SP1000M, A&futura SE100 and A&norma SR15. MQA support was added to the A&ultima SP1000 in November.
MQA’s technology captures and reproduces the sound of the original studio master in a file that’s small enough to stream and download easily. With the Tidal Masters integration, users can stream thousands of MQA tracks on their players.
Astell&Kern says its players with MQA support have a full decoder built in, so they can unfold all the way to the original resolution of the file. MQA playback is supported both via downloaded MQA audio files and through the embedded Tidal app, allowing users to stream high-resolution audio via Tidal Masters.