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Working great here with a Blue Sound Flex and RoonâŚ
Great job Blue Sound and RoonâŚ
The upgrade for Bluesound devices is available. Just upgraded my Node and it all seems to work.
Something I noticed.
When playing an MQA track through roon, it appears that roon sends the âdecodedâ stream and not the MQA stream.
As an example I was playing RHCP Studio Collection. When playing through Bluesound it sends a 24/96 stream to my DAC, when sending the same stream through roon to my Node it send only a 24/48 stream to my DAC.
This is expected or maybe not? Would be great to use the MQA capabilities of Bluesound together with roon.
Roon is sending the file bit perfect to the bluesound, at 24/48. Since Roon does not do a Decode 1 on MQA that is the expected result. I wonder if Bluesound is doing a full MQA decode at all or just like Tidal only doing Decode 1.
It works really nice. The only small issue is the volume slider as it is a bit sluggish. Has anybody else noticed that?
Anybody tested it with a NAD CI 580 BluOS Network Music Player? Does it show up as 4 sones in Roon?
I am not a tech guy, but in case of bit perfect shouldnât Bluesound detect the MQA file and the unfolding/decoding should happen? Assuming bitperfect means Bluesound receives the exact same data as it gets through itâs own Tidal integration.
It doesnât show up in the playerâs diagnostics log like Tidal content does though. Tidal content will show bit rate, and the unfolding status. Zilcho for roon streams.
If you send an audio stream from Roon to the Meridian Explorer it will definitely fully decode MQA. However, if the Bluesound DAC is a MQA Renderer, like the Dragonfly DAC, then it needs a Decode 1 step done first, like with the Tidal app, before it can finish the decode. I donât know what the Bluesound DAC really is nor the actual MQA implementation of Bluesound. Just relating what how the tech has been explained and how that fits with the results you are seeing.
When you say âplayer diagnosticsâ are you referring to the BluOS controller?
Yes- if you go into settings on your bluesound player and click âhome/diagnostics/Moreâ it will bring up the player log diagnostics and if you scroll way down, you can see whatâs happening when you play a Tidal song compared to a Roon stream
Found this in the BluOS Card log (while debugging a different Roon problem):
<dspout_args>-M default:mqa_render</dspout_args>
Not sure if this confirms the ârendererâ status of the card, but between its behavior and this, perhaps it is more of a âDragonflyâ than a full-blown fully hardware-based implementation?
Hmmm, I want to hear more about this. If BlueSound devices are software dependent when decoding MQA, that could be a dealbreaker.
Thanks for explaining. So it probably is on the Bluesound side. Will sit tight for the software implementation in roon.
Where do you get the decode 1 and 2 statements from ? Is there documentation on these devices that say they donât fully decode/unfold?
Maybe I missed it. Are you referring to devices that output the analogue final output or devices that are part of the digital chain?
Thanks
Can anyone confirm that this is working well on Bluesound Generation 1 devices please?
Works fine on a Node Gen1.
Works almost perfect on a bluesound soundbar; when starting playing some music (after having it paused about an half hour), roon shows the stream already playing, but no sound from the soundbar. after some seconds (10 max) it starts playing. From then on it works instantly,
I think that the delay will be because the soundbar goes into âsleepâ (low energy) mode - i find the same delay when playing from Roon and also when switching on the TV (which uses the optical input on the soundbar) when the soundbar has been âoffâ for a period.