HighResAudio as a Roon service

Interesting for us Europeans. Integrated with Roon.

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There’s a mention about HRA streaming will be available for Roon(look at faq below). The only downside is there’s no monthly subscription plan but a upfront payment for 12 months :frowning: HRA streams native up to 24/192k FLAC meaning there’s no MQA.

https://www.highresaudio.com/en/content/faq-streaming

Here is an extract: ‘HRA Streaming currently works on Mac and Windows desktop computers as well as on network players of selected partner manufacturers. You can soon also find HRA Streaming in the software players of Audirvana, ROON and Amarra. Mobile support on iOS and Android (smartphones / tablets) is currently under development and will be available for free later this year.’

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Any idea what “Pure Master Quality Sound (P-QMS)“ is? I’m especially interested in quality — are the masters further processed before streaming? It would seem so — at least enough to require a new acronym

I’m also wondering if the streamed music will sound (are) identical to the downloads they provide.

Finally, I’d love to learn more about how it will be integrated with Roon. Will it be like how Tidal is integrated?

Why should they? Their service is to offer unaltered high resolution audio. MQA is a lossy format.

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I think HRA makes very clear that all Hi-Res streaming are directly from studio master without any processing.

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Yes, but HRA also offer MQA as downloads so they may still offer MQA in the future.

then why does their FAQ page make such a clear reference to how proud they are about their r&d department and p-qms?

you may be right, but the above at least casts confusion.

I eagerly look forward - especially for new “Manhattan Transfer” album - and great that is available in Flac 48 and MQA :slight_smile:

Maybe.

I see that the links to the streaming pages (FAQ, etc.) have been removed from the footer at HRA’s website. For now, only ‘Audiosystems’ remains, with Roon and Amarra listed with a ‘TBC’ designation.

I guess something’s cooking allright, but someone may have jumped the gun a bit.

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I am a part of a target group, that values sound quality and wants to be served competently and honestly. So - farewell Roon, farewell Tidal and HRA WELCOME!

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Why farewell Roon? It says that HRA and Roon will eventually be partners.

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They can “make very clear” whatever they want, but there’s no proof that any of their downloads are an actual studio master, without any processing.

Wow, no punches pulled. Nice to see them telling the truth and requesting that MQA do the same. Hopefully their streaming service can find its way into the US market. -edit- …and be integrated w/ Roon of course!
:rainbow: :heavy_plus_sign: :unicorn:

This is very promising. Fingers crossed.

HRA wrote me a few days ago that they were promised by Roon an integration but nothing happened since and that they have no influence on Roon.

I´m not sure if Roon has already commented anywhere if they intend to integrate HRA or any other high-resolution service in addition to Tidal - would be nice to have transparency on such important topic given that high-resolution streaming will become a far greater importance and I would like to see Roon continue to lead this space.

here HRA original responce:

"leider haben wir keinen Einfluss auf ROON. Mann hatte uns zwar eine Integration versprochen, aber es passiert seitens ROON nichts.

Bitte wenden Sie sich mit Ihrer Anfrage an ROON."

I suspect Roon won’t integrate with any streaming service that isn’t essentially global. At least not until higher development priorities are finished.

I’ve brought a couples of Hi-Res albums at HRA, some of albums are really available from other vendors such as HDTracks, Channel Classics which offered the identical resolution and sampling rate.

There’s a tool that can check the authenticity of Hi-Res:

https://www.highresaudio.com/en/content/qualityguarantee

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I believe Roon has higher priorities right now such as highly anticipated MQA decoding. Besides, HRA has not started streaming yet and its subscription model is based on yearly not monthly basis.

I guessed one has to wait for anything other than Tidal + Roon but there’s other platforms which can offer streaming right now.

I support this. HRA is live too, would love to try out their sub with roon. Its not a rival to tidal because of the different catalog. Maybe Audirvana+ will support HRA Stream? They do support the HRA account and Qobuz.

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