Okay,
Let's say I get the BlueSound Vault 2 (I am leaning toward that), will I need to get a new DAC as well that decodes Hi-Rez files?
Right now I have a SimAudio 300D, but now I see newer DAC's advertising that they can decode MQA files too or something like that.. Is this true?
If so, what DAC should I look into upgrading to for my Tidal MQA listening with the BlueSound Vault 2?
MQA can operate in two modes, software and hardware decoding. The Bluesound node will do software decoding of an MQA file and the output that file as a standard 24/96 bitstream. So if your SimAudio DAC can handle 24/96 you are good to go.
The next step up is to get a DAC that can decode the MQA file directly in hardware. According to MQA a hardware decodes signal produces sound quality similar to what one would get from a native 24/194 file. The hardware chips used to decode MQA within a DAC are also custom programed for each DAC to take into consideration the sonic signature of the DAC so that the final signal is (supposedly) a perfect replica of the original signal. Keep in mind that this is this marketing speak from MQA (and CDs were introduced by Sony as "perfect sound forever.") I have not spent anytime listening seriously to any hardware MQA DACS nor have I had the opportunity to compare hardware and software decoding of the same file, so the marketing releases are all the information I have top go on.
I do like what I hear from the Tidal Masters (their name for the library of MQA encoded albums) using the software decoding in my Bluesound Node (1). Unfortunately there is really no way of knowing how much of that sound is due to the fact that they are MQA files vs something else that was done during the mastering of the MQA versions.
If you already have Tidal Hi-Fi (the version that streams at full Redbook bandwidths (as opposed to the cheaper option that only sends you mp3 versions of the songs) you don't need to do anything to recieve the MQA files, accerss to them is included with a Tidal Hi-Fi subscription. If you do have Tidal Hi-Fi check out the Masters section now. MQA files are supposed to sound better than Redbook files, even if they are not decoded.