Markus…There is no “new/proper” handling of MQA. MQA is handled fine by Bluesound already. The “new/proper” might be from Roon’s perspective, but I’m not sure I’d call it any more or less “proper” than any other implementation. I’d merely refer to it as the way Roon is electing to implement MQA via RAAT. If that means “proper” to everyone here, so be it, but, let’s be clear and accurate in understanding that this can all be done entirely without Roon at present; no alterations required.
All of this said, MQA has done very little to reverse Tidal’s fortunes or subscriber base, so, this may all be essentially for naught.
MQA wouldn’t be on my personal top 10 for Roon developments I’d care about, I just hate using two apps at present when I do want to dip into MQA, that’s all.
Hi Joe,
exactly what I tried to mention earlier today (in my first port) .
Bluesound does not require Roon for MQA processing, but actually the combination of Roon and Bluesound is not working for MQA material. With other devices it’s working, at least the other combinations I have in use. The technical reason behind seems to be a change in the RAAT protocol / Roon SDK.
And like you pointed out, I do not believe MQA / Roon integration is a big business case for Bluesound, at least for now.
For some this seems to be an big issue - may they complain and wait - I prefer listening to the music, unfortunately without Roon as control/frontend for this type of source. But who cares at the end of the day
bye
Markus
PS: I’m on a lifetime membership - just to clarify
I should have been more specific about where you were dead wrong, sorry.
Several things, Blusound has committed to fixing this so that their devices pass MQA to Roon in a manner that is appropriately decoded, so you should expect change.
This is not a question of the size of the user base it is a question of Blusound’s priorities/willingness to committ resources to their (likely) outsourced developer.
You should also take note that every other manufacturer, several of whom were faced with similar Roon MQA issues have taken the time, money, and respect for their users to modify their architecture accordingly.
Lastly, this entire discussion is moot as Roon recently announced that a future release will include MQA unfolding, so again, you should expect change.
Expect change!
Hi Mark,
all fine for me - Bluesound may change to the new SDK or not - I just don’t care, because it will add nothing you couldn’t do already (yes, unfortunately without Roon). I agree on the impression that Bluesound devices are actually not 100% Roon ready (or RRR - real roon ready - as I read somewhere here). If I got it right, Bluesound stated that the new Roon SDK will require some major design changes in BluOS (translates into some money and time …), and here I see potential conflicts in setting up priorities - they had already a working integration before Roon changed the SDK for MQA support! A couple of vendors struggle here, and yes, some have fixed it already.
Just remember, Bluesound does not require Roon (for MQA or other services), but Roon requires audio hardware devices with Roon / RAAT support. There are two sides of the coin, like the story around Qobuz integration, Deezer support or usage of TuneIn and others.
But as mentioned already, you can wait and/or complain, I prefer listening to the music … - take it easy, it’s just listening to music and nothing serious!
bye
Markus
I notice that with Roon 1.5 my Bluesound Pulse has ‘No MQA Support’ selected by default.
This means we are still waiting the Bluesound update to correct this. Am I right, any news?
Roon equipment database is not yet fully up to speed, if you know better change the MQA support option.
In the case of the Meridian equipment, Roon is presently defaulting to no MQA support (Roon/Meridian/MQA are aware) … but you can over ride this in setting and all is well.
BlueSound, I think they still need a firmware update … but try it and report back.
I just did a Bluesound test -
It’s not ready yet for full decoding or rendering the last fold through Roon, but plays Roon decoded audio fine. So I guess the best route for now is to keep on “No MQA Support” or “Renderer Only”.
Ok so this is confusing - after upgrading Bluesound’s firmware (and desktop player) I changed the audio settings in Roon for my Powernode 2 as a Decoder/Renderer.
This is the output in the signal path & Bluesound diagnostics when playing a Tidal MQA 192 :
Jun 19 17:26:49 (none) user.info ./ms.pl: Controller::_Codec_play Controller.pm (1150) Raat:raat_pcm01:pcm/96000/24/2/mqaCore=192000/3
Jun 19 17:26:49 (none) user.info dspout: Playback device is default:mqa_render,192000,1,0
Jun 19 17:26:49 (none) user.info dspout: Stream parameters are 96000Hz, S24_3LE, 2 channels
I can’t tell from the Bluesound diagnostics if it’s actually unfolding correctly when it’s set to Decoder/Renderer, although it looks to be when set to Renderer only.
On device settings of the power node2 the default settings are changed from no MQA support to “renderer only”.
For the pulse Flex the default is still “no MQA support” @support will this be updated as well?
Re. whether or not to set Bluesound to Decoder/Renderer or just Renderer … I assume that this has been discussed elsewhere but what are the advantages, if any, to setting Roon to decode vs the DAC/device if it’s able??
But the Bluesound units cannot both decode and render a Roon RAAT stream. You need to set the device to “Render only” in Roon settings.
Someone wrote that this change was automatically changed, but in my case i had to manually adjust for my Vault and Soundbar.
The signal path for my Pulse Flex does not show the MQA Renderer step (it is set as renderer in Roon device setup and plays MQA through the Bluesound app. Has anyone else with a Flex gotten it to work?
.
But who cares at the end of the day 
