Sadly, no change after a forced restart.
I am out of ideas nowā¦ We triedā¦
Thanks, Chris. We did indeed.
Hoping support will chime in with good info, even if thereās no current solution.
Well, itās not a Roon issue but Tidal May help.
Iāve contacted Tidal support. Will report back here if I find out anything interesting.
The audio chain must not be bit perfect somewhere. As an aside Bob Stuart was talking about MQA cleaning peopleās digital pipes as they only spot a problem when MQA doesnāt work. My paraphrase.
My apologies if Iāve missed something in the thread. Is this anything to do with the fact that the Explorer 2 does not (or does not appear to) act as a renderer of the first MQA unfold?
To get MQA via Tidal from my iPad Pro, I set Tidal to Hi Fi and Not Masters so the Explorer 2 does the full unfold.
This doesnāt work for the OP.
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@joel
You may be on to something here. If I set the Explorer 2 as an MQA renderer only in Roon, it behaves exactly like it does in the Tidal iOS app. I have to set it as a decoder + renderer in Device Setup in Roon to get the DAC to fully unfold and authenticate the MQA audio.
Thoughts?
Because you donāt get a Roon-like signal path in the TIDAL app, itās very hard to say.
If you set the Explorer2 as a renderer (only) in Roon, then Roon will decode and preserve the signalling information required for downstream rendering (but the Explorer2 fails to render or indicate that it is rendering - it canāt cryptographically authenticate MQA which has already undergone the first unfold, so no blue or green light, but does it have a magenta light which could/should be used?).
Do we know if any other renderers that work with the first unfold taking place in the TIDAL iOS app?
No magenta light; blue, green or white only. But I think you have found the heart of the issue.
Apparently , Chris is able to get the āHiFiā version of the Master file to be fully unfolded and authenticated by his Explorer 2, which makes sense in the context of your information because the Master file is MQA, but in the HiFi mode it wonāt be unfolded by the app and therefore, somehow, gets to the Explorer 2 bit perfect and able to be fully decoded and rendered by the Explorer.
I just wish I knew why that doesnāt work for me on any of my iDevices.
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Tidal support says the Lightning USB3 Camera Adapter Iām using isnāt supported. They only support the Lightning Camera Adapter that @Chrislayeruk is using in his screenshots. Hereās the link to the product that they gave me:
Lightning to USB Camera Adapter
Iām supposed to receive one tomorrow, so weāll find out if support is correct.
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True for most audio devices but, as an example, the Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 does not have a conventional DAC and will eventually have a firmware update to add the second unfold. Perhaps a little off topic here but thought Iād shareā¦ 
You know, I donāt normally point out to tech support people errors that I know theyāve made. They do their best to help and sometimes come up with OOB ideas. But in this case I should have.
My own Internet research (which is usually pretty good) indicated that the unpowered version of the Apple CCK wouldnāt work for the Explorer 2 because it draws too much power. The powered version that I show in my screenshots above is the adapter that works.
When I hook up the E2 to the unpowered camera adapter kit that Tidal TS said was supported, I get the error message that the device canāt be used because it draws too much power. So Tidalās solution isnāt, at least not for this DAC. But if I had a Dragonflyā¦
I also need power via the camera kit for the Explorer 2
So again, the mystery is why does your E2 work and mine doesnāt?
It will become moot next month when my Tidal subscription runs out, but I hate leaving things unsolved, in an OCD kind of way. 
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Agree, I was surprised they recommended that.
Say again what you are after - Tidal app to Explorer2 using HiFi quality and full unfold in Explorer 2? I can try mine later today.
What iDevice do you have?
That is exactly what Iām after.
I have an iPad Air, and iPad Pro and an iPhone X. Results the same across all 3 devices.
Feedback from TIDAL support arrived.
They set their iDevice up exactly as I did mine, with the latest version (yesterday) of the iOS playing Master quality files in iOS. They got the blue authentication light and full unfold on their Explorer 2.
Iām beginning to think my DAC may be defective. Which would be too bad, because it seems Meridian is out of the portable DAC business.
Meanwhile, my Oppo HA-2 connects directly to my iPhone/iPad and plays Qobuz Hi-Res Audio files perfectly.
I have the same issue as you, with the same setup, latest versions of the Tidal and iOS. There is no mqa unfold with the Explorer2.
Iāv tried to play downloaded mqa file with other mplayer app, and itās working properly with the Explorer2.
Is your iPhone EU or US version?