They don’t contribute to Roon’s MQA bill but as everyone pays the same subscription price they are helping to pay the MQA charges for those that do.
Roon’s prices have not remained static. The monthly charge is $13 versus $10 when I first subscribed four years ago and the lifetime charge has gone from $500 to $700. The only way to get the same price as a year or two ago is to pay a year’s worth of monthly charges up front.
Do I use every feature available in Roon? No, I don’t! There are one or two features in Roon that I have no interest in using.
Am I annoyed that I am subsidising those features for those who do use them? No, I am not!
Roon is no different from any other software package. You appraise the package, purchase it if you feel it is of value to you and then decide which of its features you choose to use.
It’s fairly straightforward and ought not to be controversial.
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I thought that the monthly subscription option was only introduced last year:
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I’ll quote our COO regarding charging users for use of the MQA decoder directly:
Yes, that’s common sense, but there are some who just insist on kicking MQA when there is nothing to kick… I’m ok with that as I see it as noise and to be expected.
I mean, I can buy a smart TV full off apps I will never use but the licence fee is costed in.
Do I care?
Nope, as I know that overall it is cheaper and more efficient for everyone to operate in this way. It’s how the world works and MQA is no different. It is what it is… You buy a comprehensive product or package and you use it in the way you choose with all the options available. Simples…
That very well may be true. I was responding to the statement that the prices were static and had not been raised in the last five years when clearly they have been raised.
Hi John,
I got into this in response to the statement that MQA was free to the end user when in fact it is not. The cost is baked into Roon’s subscription price. My comment that all Roon users picked up the cost whether they use MQA or not wasn’t a complaint or suggestion that Roon charge different prices, just an observation. As a matter of fact, as a $500/Roon Lifer it doesn’t affect me either way. On a side note, I’m not sure where all the animosity towards my post is coming from. I’ve made no comment on MQA itself, good, bad or otherwise. Just pointed out that it’s not free as been claimed more than once.
For practical purposes, only Lifetime has gone up. The annual has only gone up from $119 to $119.88 annually.
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No animosity here! Was just pointing you to a direct quote on how our COO views the situation.
MQA has not affected pricing at all, as far as I can tell. Yes, the Lifetime subscription price went up, but not because of MQA, but because it was grossly underpriced. It’s still underpriced, but not by as much. But, as MQA did not increase pricing, it is free to all, whether we use it or not. MQA is being financed by added membership that it brings in. It’s possible that the “new blood” has prevented an increase to the annual subscription rate. The yearly non-MQA user may actually be paying less because of the MQA users than he/she might be otherwise. The fact that Roon was able to retain a Lifetime membership despite conjecture it would end might be because of new members who came on because of MQA. I will never use MQA, but no one, except Danny and one or two others, can say for sure how the pricing structure of today has been influenced by incorporating MQA.
Indifference to someone’s opinion is offensive 
I wasn’t actually referring to anything you said, just adding on in general that, although I said absolutely nothing negative about MQA itself, a number of the regular Pro MQA posters here felt obligated to sail in and square me up about how things are. Not a real problem, I’ve got a thick skin and I’m done with this in any event.
I started reading this thread out of curiosity, and came across this argument, which rates highly on the ridiculous. My first thought was “OMG, how horrible! Depriving someone of their high-res! What an evil thought!”.
We know that MQA is only 17-bit and 96 kHz at maximum, so by your own argument, music could simply be encoded at 16/96 and everyone could have their “high res” with the same bandwidth. No proprietary encoding required. It would also use less bandwidth, as the added bits which encode the MQA data, which don’t compress well through audio compression methods such as FLAC, would be unnecessary.
So, the real question is, why is MQA insisting on gatekeeping high resolution audio to the limited subset of people with the ability to afford whatever new MQA compatible hardware that is necessary to decode it?
WiFi problems can be solved by common equipment, or wired networking. MQA requires special equipment, for music which is often lower resolution (measurably and audible) than the regularly available lossless 16/44.1 version.
Let me state that I’m disappointed that someone who works for Roon would argue this kind of nonsense.
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You’ve missed the basic point. Almost all audio formats are free. MQA wanted to monopolise HD audio and make all along the supply chain and consumers pay.
People here like what Roon does, as do my family (my wife loves it), and choose to pay for it. What seriously annoys a lot of people is not having choice, and having to pay for something of questionable value. Hence they felt threatened by MQA when they got the major labels onboard.
MQA failed, but it may squirm along for a little time before its inevitable demise.
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Here’s my understanding of the arguments you’re making, please correct me if I’m wrong. I’ve put my analysis of each point in parenthesis, I’ll expand on them below.
- Gatekeeping hi-res audio isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things (opinion)
- MQA is 17-Bit 96kHz maximum (factually incorrect)
- MQA requires hardware to decode it (factually incorrect)
- WiFi problems can be solved by common equipment, or wired networking. (strawman)
- MQA requires special equipment (factually incorrect)
- MQA is often lower resolution than regularly available 16/44.1 (debatable)
Gatekeeping hi-res audio isn’t a big deal (opinion)
I’m confused about what you were trying to get across with this comment. That hi-res audio isn’t important, or that gatekeeping isn’t a bad thing?
Regarding the former, let’s dismiss the technical “is the hi-res difference audible” debate for a second and simply acknowledge that two of the three biggest traditional music streaming services now offer hi-res in their basic paid tier.
I’d wager that the average person would have difficulty discerning 1080p from 4k on a 55” TV from more than a few feet away. That hasn’t stopped 4k TVs from flying off the shelves has it?
MQA is 17-Bit 96kHz maximum (factually incorrect)
MQA uses noise shaping and perceptual coding and can’t be described as having a static bit-depth. The bit-depth will even change at a given frequency within the same track. As you can see in the following spectrogram, it’s capable of 18-bit to 20-bits from 0Hz to 30kHz, 20-bits from 30kHz to 20kHz, and 20-bits to 17-bits from 20kHz to 48kHz.
See this graph from the Stereophile MQA Q&A:
MQA requires special equipment (factually incorrect)
MQA requires hardware to decode it (factually incorrect)
MQA requires no special equipment to receive the MQA core decoded 88.2kHz or 96kHz stream which will retain the pertinent audio info up to 48kHz at up to 20-bits of accuracy (or more).
WiFi problems can be solved by common equipment, or wired networking. (strawman)
Not everybody has the knowhow, financial means, or logistical capabilities to redo their network.
The “common equipment” thing is a misconception that I addressed in this post.
Regarding the wired networking bit, what about renters who don’t want ethernet cables snaking around their homes? Or people who can’t or don’t want to pay to run CAT-5E through their walls?
Regardless, you failed to refute the argument that there are a significant number of wireless networks and devices in the world that struggle with hi-res audio streaming and that MQA may offer a better experience in these situations vs. hi-res FLAC. Your argument is “good networks can stream hi-res” which is irrefutably true.
MQA is often lower resolution than regularly available 16/44.1 (debatable)
I’m not sure what you mean by this. As shown in this post, the MQA-CD actually matched the spectral distribution of the DXD master closer than the PCM-CD.
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I think Roon is a great product and offers an elegant solution that eliminates user complexity in the transition to digital and high res audio.
As long as it’s still possible to connect Roon to Qobuz and thereby not interact with corrupted MQA files this issue can be avoided.
If Roon limits that ability, or goes all in with Tidal, or makes a strong stand in favor of MQA, which appears to be increasingly happening, I think Roon will see user exodus.
Just my two cents…
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MQA can support close to 24b dynamic range in some situations due to use of both noise shaping and subtractive dither. There are citations of that in Bob’s blog and writings elsewhere.
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The vast majority of MQA files available today are just 16 bit or higher PCM format, or possibly DSD. They are transcoded en masse by the streamer, like Tidal. The pushed to the player which decodes them minimally or maximally. The advantages are supposed to be bandwidth, but there is some evidence that is not the case, or that the reduction in bandwidth is minimal. So the benefit to the consumer vs other sources of hi-rez streaming is the specialized sauce of the processing. The processing when applied to an already existing PCM or DSD file seems to me to be about the same as the digital filters available on many dacs. Its essentially a tone control. So why not have MQA as a processing option on your DAC. Push the magic button, get the processing. Why control the whole playback chain (and profit from it)? That’s what irritates me. The fact that in order to use Tidal, I have to listen to it post filter and under the DRM/control of a third party that does not seem to have the consumers best interests in mind. There is no off button.
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It’ll be more expensive to implement it. If they go down that route, I’m sure MQA is pretty dead by now.
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