Is this working and Roon just isn’t showing the rendering step in the signal path? Or will it not because the iDSD BL is a renderer only and not a decoder? The lights on the iDSD BL aren’t any help because it’s always yellow with any audio, even just playing through th built in music app. It might be placebo, but I feel like the sound is better when using he MBP versus the iPhone.
I just recently got a Google Pixel 3 for work, so I intend to try that and see what the signal path looks like, but I don’t have an OTG cable yet. Would this work on Android or have a similar issue?
That signal path looks as expected and you are getting MQA content outputted via your iPhone. Because iOS doesn’t have USB HID support, the signal path is unable to display the MQA Renderer stage but it is still being preserved at the 64bit Float to 24bit with MQA Signaling stage. Hope this helps!
My Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital can do MQA Decoder and Render from iPad mini 2 without any problem, just make sure your iOS’s USB output is bit perfect:
Thanks everyone for the replies/guidance. I’d like to circle back and confirm everything is in good working order. With the iFi iDSD Black Label firmware 5.3c implemented a GTO filter that upsamples everything to 384kHz, which is indicated with a yellow light. Sadly MQA is also indicated by a yellow light so there was no visual confirmation available.
So I “downgraded” to firmware 5.3, which supports MQA, but doesn’t implement the GTO filter. So non-MQA content was green (44/48/88/96kHz) and MQA streamed from Tidal does trigger the yellow LED Thanks again!