It has the same svelte-feeling aluminium case of its predecessor, so is just about practical for mobile music use too. It sports an internal headphone amplifier, so it effectively transforms a laptop into a hi-res digital playback system. Being a portable, it’s intended for use with a computer via its USB input. It will, it’s important to point out, also play back standard, non-MQA digital files in PCM format, although not DSD.Īs a product, the Explorer2 is lovely to look at and use. The MQA recording format uses intelligent encoding, which is then specially decoded by a DAC with MQA support, such as the Explorer2. It’s more than just another data compaction algorithm though, because it’s focused on preserving the correct time-domain information of the music – which recent neuro scientific research has shown to be paramount for serious sound quality. Effectively, it lets you have hi-res ‘for free’, as far as storage is concerned. Master Quality Authenticated is essentially a way of packing hi-res files into a ‘container’ the size of a standard CD file. The Explorer2 could be the product that Meridian always intended the original to be – because it now supports the new MQA format.
Perhaps its successor might have more luck. Meridian’s original Explorer DAC, was a little out of the ordinary (not least because it was a new market sector for a traditionally high-end brand), but didn’t quite set the world alight. Meridian has just brought improved sonics and MQA functionality to the Explorer DAC’s sleek alloy chassis, says David Price