Audio Video News

Bluesound, maker of wireless multiroom music systems and sister company of NAD Electronics and PSB Speakers, today announced the availability of a firmware upgrade that will enable all Bluesound wireless music players to play MQA music files.

Owners of Bluesound products will be prompted to upgrade to the new BluOS firmware, version 2.2, which adds MQA support and other enhancements and upgrades. MQA music will be supported and available on the Android version of the BluOS app, with support for iOS devices to follow soon after, the company said.

MQA, short for Master Quality Authenticated, is an end-to-end technology that captures and delivers studio-master-quality audio in a file small enough to stream or download. As Bob Stuart, inventor of MQA technology explained in an interview with Sound & Vision, “We’ve examined the fundamentals based on the science of how we hear and we’ve managed to put the actual sound of the real event into a sensible size file.”

In the BluOS app, the MQA indicator glows green or blue to indicate that the player is decoding and playing an MQA stream or file. Blue signifies an MQA Studio file that has been either approved in the studio by the artist/producer or verified by the copyright owner.

The new BluOS firmware, version 2.2, also includes Calm Radio integration, which provides commercial-free access to more than 160 Internet radio broadcasts covering a variety of genres, including classical, pop, rock, and jazz.

Bluesound said it is working to bring MQA support to select BluOS-enabled systems from NAD Electronics in the future.

For more information, visit bluesound.com.

Related:

For more detail on MQA technology and the man behind it, see our recent interview with Bob Stuart, co-founder of England’s Meridian Group:
“Audio Statesman: Meridian Founder Bob Stuart.”

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