I have been using my Android phone with the ldac Bluetooth codec that is available with the Oreo upgrade. My headphones, Sony WH-1000XM2, also use the ldac codec. However, I’m noticing Roon downsampling the 24bit to 16bit.
Is there a way to get to to output the full 24 through to a Bluetooth endpoint? Or is this an Android issue? I’m trying to get Android working with 24 bit in the settings, but not successfully.
Great question - I’m also playing with oreo plus LDAC headphones on a couple phones - LG G6 & Essentia.
With the tidal android app directly on the latter it actually also implements MQA Core decode (!) like roon, and I think is keeping the signal 24 bit to my headphones.
The problem I noticed w/ the essential is that I was hoping to use my Explorer 2 to get a full decode when attached to my phone via the USB port - during playback w/ tidal directly I only to seem to get the white 24/96 lighting up on the dac. Playing via Roon to my phone as an endpoint, only one light lights up - I wonder if that is related to downgrade of the signal when android is an endpoint like you mention ? (I was hoping to use roon as a workaround to pass the MQA-tagged audio to my explorer)
To the OP, do you have a hifi tidal account ? And if so, what happens when you use your phone to playback Hifi or Master content to your phones - if you look in the Developer Options under Bluetooth once connected it should show you what it is using as transport in this case, and as roon endpoint also. I’m curious in latter case (with roon) what Developer options on your phone is reporting to your headphones ?
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Also - a quick observation after trying same thing as OP with my own android phone, oreo, plus LDAC headphones and Tidal MQA - I also see it downsampling from 24 to 16 bit. This happens even if I go into Audio settings for my android phone, advanced settings, and up to 24 bit support.
I do have a tidal account and when I’m using my Sony headphones, under developer mode, whether I’m using Roon or tidal, it displays that it is using ldac at 32 bits and 96khz. It still shows that when Roon is indicating that it is passing 16 bit 44.1khz to the phone.
I don’t believe that tidal is decoding mqa on my s7. I have no way to really check
yeah - I think the phone sounds like is doing the best it can but for some reason Roon is always giving it downsampled 16 bit - odd ?