stumped.
Bringing this back up. I don’t want MQA at all, just pure redbook audio. I also have HiFi selected in the dropdown pictured above but relentlessly get MQA in the signal path. My DAC right now shows it’s receiving an 88.2 kHz stream.
In Tidal you have the option of selecting the HiFi (16/44 redbook) version of the song as it’s labeled without an “M” icon. No such luck in Roon. Possible to get this resolved? Switching back to Tidal for all my listening.
Can you you share information about the particular releases affected? Regarding the example above, Agnes Obel’s Myopia is only available as a Master in the TIDAL app (certainly in my region.)
If you don’t want the source file decoded disable Core Decoder in Roon. You’ll only receive the 44.1 or 48kHz stream.
No MQA Support means your DAC has no MQA capability. However, Roon does and will perform the first unfold (decode) for you. If you go into the advanced settings you can disable this.
Note that the TIDAL app does this too by default and quite possibly switching to HiFi disables this.
Found what you mentioned and it did indeed stopped upsampling to 88.2 kHz so thanks for that. The issue is still Roon defaults to playing the MQA version of a track, despite you selecting “HiFi” from the Tidal settings dropdown.
Searching for “What Would it Take Chelsea” in Tidal:
^ multiple tracks denoting the file type, choose your poison.
Searching for “What Would it Take Chelsea” in Roon:
^ no such selection in the search results view. Just one version and Roon always defaults to MQA.
What you can do, however, is click the album from the track. Once you’re in the album view you’ll see “Tracks | Credits | Versions” Then you click versions and you’ll see this:
From there you can get a pure redbook version of the same track. This is annoying for two reasons:
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It’s extra steps to do something that Roon should sort out for you since they know you want the Redbook version from the Tidal settings dropdown.
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You’re handcuffed to MQA when using radio, which I use all the time to find new music.
Is it possible for Roon to respect the quality setting from the dropdown selector or is this a limitation of the software/API?
I’ve taken a quick look at this and in the main Roon handles the various TIDAL quality settings correctly. The example you present is interesting because it is an MQA 44.1kHz recording. Of the albums I sampled, MQA 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz and so on choose 44kHz 16bit recordings.
With HiFi set, MQA 44.1kHz releases sometimes played Red Book and other times MQA 44.1kHz.
I suspect this is happening at the TIDAL end not within Roon.
An extra step yes, but the versions do show explicit and non-explicit versions. This is helpful information for me in choosing which version of an album I’d like to hear.
I agree about the limitations mentioned with Roon Radio. There should be a way to specify only non-MQA tracks. If there is only an MQA version, the track shouldn’t be selected.
Are you conflating two discussion points here? Roon Radio won’t play MQA if TIDAL it’s set to HiFi (other than some exceptions mentioned above.)
You’d rather miss out on something than listen to MQA? That seems an odd statement … I’ll happily listen to a cassette if that’s the only source.
Go to device settings, advanced settings -> disable mqa decoder. Thats it.
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That’s not what I intended (and nor do I think it is what @Relaxasaurus means).
Your suggestion takes an MQA track and plays it as a non MQA track.
What I’m still looking for (and had really given up on until this thread got revived) was for Roon to default to the non MQA version in the first place.
No it doesnt if you have Hifi choosed at the settings and you disable decoder. Ofc Roon has this enabled default [Moderated]
But we are still getting MQA tracks even when “Hifi” is selected
Disable that MQA decoder and check again.
edit: Still sometimes you get MQA file, but 95% flac.
Ocassionally some MQA is played as described in my earlier post.
Be interesting to see what the tnative tidal app sends on these albums.