The difference is that by default, TIDAL is performing the MQA Core Decoding, and Roon doesn’t have that feature, so they are sending different streams. This bug only happens when the DAC is processing un-decoded MQA.
When configured the same way (no software decoding of MQA), both players have hiccups during MQA playback. So does Foobar, Audirvana, etc under the same circumstances. I’ve had discussions with MQA about the issue and its root cause, and at this point it is well established what is going wrong and where it needs to be fixed. It’s just a matter of waiting for it to be rolled out.
It should be noted that if everything were working properly, TIDAL would not be decoding the MQA signal–it’s against MQA’s product guidelines to engage a software decoder when speaking to a DAC that is capable of MQA decoding. It’s only because of that bug, that the bug reported in this thread is being masked when using the TIDAL app.
I’ve seen similar with this DAC. It can be pretty finicky when bus powered, and MQA seems to increase power requirements enough to push it over the line into instability.