When using eqMac as output in Tidal music quality delivered is reduced

[ghost]

I use the Dragonfly Cobalt when listening to music on my Mac. The Cobalt displays colors to let you know what the current signal quality is.

Red = Standby; Green = 44.1kHz; Blue = 48kHz; Yellow = 88.2kHz; Light Blue = 96kHz; Purple = MQA.

If I use the Cobalt as my output device when listening to a track available in Master Quality (MQA) the Cobalt shows the color Purple. If I switch the output of Tidal to eqMac so I can take advantage of the AutoEQ integration for my HD650 headphones the color on the Cobalt changes to Green (44.1khz) which is the lowest quality the device tracks. See the attached video

sound.quality.change.mp4

[nodeful]

You shouldn't be selecting eqMac as the output like that. You should have "System Controlled" selected in Tidal, while making sure your Cobalt device is set to the Sampling Rate you want in AudioMIDISetup.app. Then select the Cobalt device within eqMac. That way the driver will mimic the Sampling Rate of the Cobalt device and in theory your device should be getting the highest quality audio possible.
What sampling rate is MQA? I imagine it's probably 192kHz? eqMac should support that.
Also seems like you don't have eqMac running at the point of recording the video as eqMac's device name should match the name of the selected device with (eqMac) suffix at the end.

[hatemosphere]

@nodeful with eqMac i have second DAC audio device created with the same name and when I select it in Tidal, it's not detected as MQA device, so MQA just doesn't work with eqMac

[starkstrom-de]

adding a note here, MQA requires a license to completely unfold a MQA file. I would suspect that Eqmac does not have such a license, therefore the file is downsampled to 16bit-44.1khz .

[superjeng1]

Hi, as this issue is basically not fixable, I would close the issue here.
A small note: I do not support MQA as it is not lossless and playing the file "unfolded" is not lossless either because it add stuff to the signal. If what you wish to get is high quality audio, please look into Qobuz or buying FLAC files.