I bet people have plenty of pre amps with inputs they never use but go to serve to make the product more flexible and thus cheaper in the long run.
It’s the same for Roon for sure.
On one hand people say MQA is costing us all monies and in the next breath they are at the point of bankruptcy. If it was such a cash cow as has been intimated in the past they clearly aren’t creaming enough of it. Cant have it both ways…
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Good and fine, I will never criticize you, or anyone else, for liking MQA, XYX, ar anything else. But, on my system, which cost a ton of money, MQA does not sound much better than mp3 or acc, and definitely inferior to Redbook. That doesn’t mean I am right and you are wrong, or vice versa. It just means that everything combined that influences our enjoyment of music differs somewhere along the line, and I totally respect that. Although I can not fathom how anyone can enjoy MQA, I don’t need to to respect that enjoyment. And for those who can not fathom how others can not enjoy MQA, they shouldn’t need to to respect that, either. Let’s just all chill out, and respect each other for our differences, and enjoy as we see fit.
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What’s MQA? Has this come up before?
I found that it would play the standard flac not the mqa but I too switched to Qobuz and haven’t missed tidal one bit
Selective quoting can make anything fit a desired retort. I did say it’ll be interesting to see their next financials, albeit arguably 2020 will be their most telling year.
Simples … maybe.
Go to Settings > Services > TIDAL and change Streaming Quality to HiFi.
However, choose to play 48kHz 24bit MQA 96kHz and source is 44.1kHz 16bit, but play 44.1kHz 24bit MQA 44.1kHz and source is 441.kHz 16bit MQA 44.1kHz. Likewise, play 44.1kHz 16bit MQA 44.1kHz and that’s what you get.
So what’s happening? Are we listening to Red Book or a cobbled MQA file?
Will the financial health of MQA, should it turn out be not that good, even be mentioned by the MQA cheerleaders, aka the high end audio press?
I fear this has gotten away from the original feature request and I acknowledge the part I’ve played in that. That has reduced this to the usual pro and anti argument. I agree in principle with the notion of disabling a feature not wanted. But I think that is a personal choice, and that opting out of any financials associated with MQA should not be possible.
That’s quite a reasonable statement/position and, like yourself, I’m also guilty of stirring the pot a bit and I’m glad that we have once again come to our collective senses.
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Ahhh, but stirring the pot is far more entertaining than sticking to the subject. (Hee, hee, hee)
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Use qobuz.
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This thread has prompted me to demand a lower price for my next car by insisting the dealer remove the side mirrors that I don’t use. I’d also like the turn signals removed, those strange little roof racks and any air bags in the rear because nobody uses the back seat in the cars I drive. I also do not want to pay for any kind of antenna because I don’t listen to terrestrial radio. Oddly, the dealer thinks I’m crazy.
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These two posts capture it perfectly. If you want to “opt out of MQA,” then switch to Qobuz. If you want Roon to change their pricing structure to give you a discount for features you don’t want, then you are out of luck.
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I feel like people are pre-judging MQA since I agree that it is easily the best format I have heard overall and listen to it as much as I can, and yes I have heard all the other higher end formats.
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If nothing else, MQA tracks … in my experience … tend to be good recordings of good performances. How much of the SQ is down to the recording technology, I don’t know nor do I care very much. If the same results can be achieved at lower cost or using less bandwidth, fine, bring it on. Meanwhile, as far as I’m concerned, the ability to “opt out” already exists. But when one of multiple recordings of the same content is marked “MQA”, I’ll tend to pick that one first.
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Required by LAW so not a very good analogy but I get your point. As I said paying for features I don’t or can’t use is just one more negative item to consider when it comes to renew my Roon subscription. Right now there way more positive items than negative items so I will be sticking around for awhile. 
I’ll admit that I haven’t read all the replies below your comment @Jazzfan_NJ so this may have been said but I and many others subscribed to Roon before MQA functionality was added and the price of the subscription remained the same before and after. Bearing this in mind I can’t see that the fee (if there is one) has been passed along to subscribers. Also the Roon team came from Meridian Sooloos and now that the Sooloos software is no longer being developed maybe Roon have an special arrangement with Bob Stuart about MQA support.
It’s wild speculation on my part.
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I’m guessing you are right @oneofmany! If you look in the “about” section in roon – where they chose to list all licensed software as this is (almost) always a requirement of anyone who licenses software to you – you see no mention of MQA there …
Roon spent a lot of time in MQA negotiations, much more than the technical issues required. The absence of MQA in “about” may be either an omission, or indicate that Roon has written its own MQA software under an MQA licence.
I don’t want to see Roon spend any more resources on MQA, even renegotiating licence terms. It’s time to move on to other things.
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