As it says really. To get the full benefit of an MQA DAC you have to go into settings and switch off the DSP engine when listening to MQA material (currently only Tidal Masters). Then remember to switch it back on when reverting to normal files.
Having Roon automatically recognise an MQA file and switch DSP off would be the ideal. If not have a one-click way of switching DSP off/on.
Long press (or right/control-click) on your endpoint icon in the āplay barā at the bottom of the screen. Select āDSP Engineā from the pop-up menu. Change the switch at the top left of the resultant window from āEnabledā to āDisabled.ā
David - thanks; thatās definitely easier than going in via settings.
Jim - well spotted, I did have a look through the community for posting as I thought I wouldnāt be the only one with this need.
Good to see itās on the roadmap as I havenāt really bothered with MQA much (after an initial play with it) due to the faff of changing things. After another play last night Iām beginning to think the SQ is actually quite a bit better, hence wanting to find a way around the faffing. Fingers crossed it reaches production, in the interim Davidās method makes it a lot easier (god weāre lazy these days arenāt we?!)
This works but room correction is more important to me than MQA so I donāt bother.
I am hoping that when Roon adds software decoding of MQA it will be before DSP so they can be used together. Right, @Brian? I would still give up the DAC doing final MQA rendering, but that may be a worthwhile combination.
Iām not using room correction yet, but understand your point Anders. I am using upsampling, which makes a difference to the extent that I didnāt think I needed MQA, even though Iām using a Meridian DAC so am getting the full blue light benefits.
Then I tried MQA again and started to revise my opinion, hence the request. Being able to use both in parallel would be the ideal solution, so a big +1 for that suggestion (here we go again)
Anders, Iām getting ready to attempt Accourat. DSP. Are you using in Mqa at all with your DSP? I havenāt heard anything, BTW, from Mqa thats impressed me so far anyway.
I have acquired several MQA albums, both downloads and Tidal, and a few of them I have non-MQA versions as well, both CD and hi-res. I listened both with headphones and speakers, without DSP. I was not impressed by the effect. The effect of room correction is dramatic, MQA is not.
I even use DSP for my headphones with Audezeās convolution.