They are taking sides if they provide any compatibility for MQA aside from pass through AND DSP. Besides, Roon is all about philosophy. I would like to know theirs on this subject.
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I have followed many discussions on this⌠I will give you my read of their view:
Roon would like to provide customers with all possible playback formats/features - MQA is a format after all and they would like to handle that as seamlessly as possible obviously.
Roon does want a consistent customer experience - if a customer is running DSP, especially something like convolution for room correction, they would like all file formats to accommodate this workflow/process. This is where the rub comes in with the MQA âdesignâ. MQA does not want to allow for full decoding - ie the rendering portion - of the decoding to happen in software. Why? Because they want licensing revenue from DAC manufacturers. THERE IS NO OTHER REASON. The MQA style filters could be used in software to upsample to a high rate and be done with it.
Roon has been in endless discussions with MQA Co on this and have basically gotten nowhere. So the word around is that Roon will incorporate the first unfold (just like Audiravana, the TIDAL native app on mac/win, etc) and be done with it.
I donât think Roon has any other philosophy other than serving the customer with a consistent user interface and process. MQA is just a format.
Lastly, I will give you my personal and possibly not fully informed opinion: MQA will fail.
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I sure hope are right and it will fail. The more companies accommodate, they are enabling. I suggest Roon allow direct pass through with no unfolding or other MQA related processing. If MQA starts limiting quality of direct pass through, it will surely fail. But only if there is not a critical mass of enabling dacs and software.
It puzzles me why so many are asking for more MQA around here. Do they hear better quality? Of course, with current status, this is mostly having to do with Tidal within Roon.
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Iâm more concern that the DACs we buy today especially MQA ones may default to MQA filters(for whatever reasons) when playing back non MQA contents. It is through technical testing one can see the effect of aliasing and distortion patterns here. Thereâs no tool at the moment to access MQA encoders other than the music companies themselves. Because of this, it is difficult to fully test an MQA DAC without generating a test signal from the encoder. The only test at the moment rely on MQA music contents.
DSD and PCM have long been able to qualify technically with test signals for each hardware release from the manufacturers. This guarantees high standard of specifications and the rest is just listening.
Some just want to hear with their own ears in their own system, for the first time and decide SQ with their own ears, without having to buy a new DAC. Just a guess.
I was a little curious too and got Audirvana a while ago just for this curiosity purpose (the 1st unfold in this case).
I think you need to look at music publisher support with a grain of salt. If youâre an executive at these firms, you are tempted by the promise of reselling your catalog yet again in a new format. If you donât believe this is the case - I donât think this can happen again given streaming - you are still to decide whether you will say you sign up to a new tech or not. Since there is some possibility that some revenue will be derived from MQA (at least on paper) as an executive you donât want to be explaining to the board why you didnât sign up. And if you signed up and it went nowhere, noone is going to blame you since others followed suit.
So the argument that some firms saying they support MQA is murky at best.
Itâs a format they want support for. Normal ask. It should be clear to all that the reasons this is not doable in a reasonable way (in my opinion, full software based decoding) is because of MQA Co license restrictions.
Roon has ALWAYS allowed for MQA pass-through. All you need is a bit-perfect path. That obviously means that if you normally play with DSP on, you have to turn it off to play MQA. It also means that to decode MQA you will need an DAC that knows how to do that.
My understanding is that producers need to send their masters to an MQA Co service to have it encoded. Not even them have access to the software. Insane. You tell me how âmusicians are validating that MQA sounds rightâ works! 
This is quite a bomb to drop! Very interesting. This could make MQA capable DACs actually UNDESIRABLE since it would mean no potential to use DSP if you happen to have one of these hooked up.
This thread is about a simple Roon update to automatically enable/disable DSP when MQA is detected. I donât want to hijack it. But still, Itâs this overall end-to-end control that feels DRM-like â just like HDCP screwed up a whole generation of perfectly good video gear. It screws up simple things that should be capable of being done.
Deblurring and all the other stuff MQA claims to offer can be done without this end to end control.
This is just a bug that will be fixed, nothing else.
Brian says itâs a policy - that would be more than a bug, right?
It isnât a bomb (the fact that MQA prefers to do the full decode in the DAC even when the software player is capable has been public information for as long as I can remember), and it doesnât imply what youâre suggesting eitherâbut Iâm not going to get into public speculation about MQA or Roonâs MQA integration.
Iâm not saying you were keeping it secret. I had not heard that before and to me that is an interesting point, that if you have an MQA capable DAC that software decoding would be disabled. If the DAC has to do the decode, then how would DSP be applied?
Something to keep in mind when speculation leads you to the suspicion that something really distasteful is going to happen: if we thought that it was impossible to make a good product with MQA, we wouldnât be moving forward with it.
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Actually I hadnât assumed anything other than trying to take that statement literally. If the policy is more of a guideline than the rule, and DSP could be applied after a first unfold, that would be great.
I have not used much DSP other than upsampling because I get up and move around my listening room too much to define any real sweet spot. But I thought it was interesting that MQA might require disabling of software unfolding if the DAC is MQA capable. Defending that blue light!
Sounds good but I truly wonder how can one make a good product with MQA. I just donât get it after reading the MQA article on CA.
This is totally insaneâŚThey will take forever to do this!
Technically, MQA may looks bad on the measurements but it doesnât mean it sounds bad. You have to listen for yourself with a fully decoded MQA DAC. Roon incorporates MQA decoder is to satisfy users who wants MQA decoding without having to purchase a new MQA DAC.
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Agreed. Actually with my Pro-Ject S2 Digital, I think some MQA sounds really terrific. Probably would sound even better on a more upscale DAC that supports MQA. That said, the filter issue with the firmware in that DAC makes my non-MQA collection sound a little dull.
And I wonder if the problem with the firmware in that DAC not switching off the MQA filters for non-MQA, and the long time it is taking to release better firmware, has to do with the intricacies of MQA - i.e. it is not just Pro-Ject taking their sweet time releasing a firmware fix, but rather some compliance with the MQA standards that is causing this conflict. Just wondering, not implying.
Yeah, I know. I have been listening MQA with a modest MQA DAC (Pro-ject Pre Box S2 Digital) but I have not been particularly impressed by how MQA sounds with it⌠Please donât get me wrong - MQA sounds good but I just happen to like standard high res more, or even upsampled 16/44.1. So thatâs why I wonder whatâs the point of MQA if it doesnât improve SQ even with a MQA DAC.
A DAC switching on/off core decoding (ie first unfold) when an MQA file is being played is a bug in the product.
Core decoding in hardware is MQAâs preference (maybe this is what youâre referring to) but is not required - there are renderers such as the Dragonfly for example.
My DAC (dCS Rossini) does not have this issue, and does all of the MQA decoding in hardware.
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