MQA first unfold in Roon? MQA? [Delivered in 1.5]

Me? I’d go for Roon having a toggle on the playback screen or an option in the settings where when an MQA track is played it turns off all DSP, levelling etc. I’ve got an S2 that is a full renderer :slight_smile:

As for the poll - likewise. B. Consider D. I bought a lifetime membership to avoid the hassle of having to pay more at various points. If Roon becomes a platform of paid plugins I’d feel it was mis-sold.

I didn’t buy lifetime on the basis of “in year 4 it becomes cheaper…” I saw it as buying into the future of Roon. I didn’t expect it to be a paid future though. It was a statement of “you guys will still be here in 5 years time” and a convenience of “thats my music ecosystem taken care of from a software perspective, I don’t have to think about that again…”

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I agree with your reasoning but i also feel that i did buy Roon Lifetime at a time when the software and features were well worth the investment. I cannot expect my Volkswagen to turn into a Lamborghini e few years from now! :smiley: On the other hand, if i want a Volkswagen i expect it to stay a Volkswagen and not shapeshift into anything other than that…

I am happy to go with whatever Roon choose, or are obliged by MQA, to do. That doesn’t mean I’ll take the MQA option, just that I’ll take anything I get ‘free’ and give consideration to anything that requires further outlay.

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True. I don’t expect my VW to be a Lamborghini (for one I don’t enjoy driving them) in a few years time. But it would feel like (“you can either lease your VW from us, or buy it outright” and then later “ok. We forgot to tell you about the service plan…”). MQA being an add on? Sure. Make it optional. Don’t make it so that my VW doesn’t keep running without the service plan. I don’t think Roon would do that. So I am comfortable there. As @Henry_McLeod says make it optional. I don’t buy the VW and then complain it didn’t have the heated seats because that years model didn’t have them as an option.

Where I would feel aggrieved is if it becomes a plugin platform. The DSP you’ve come to enjoy? Well now we have plugins for that? The new DAC you bought? Because of our partnership agreement with them you’ll have to pay extra to support that…

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For clarity I didn’t mean make it optional. I just meant I wouldn’t have a fit if the decision were to make it optional! What I do think is that the point is fast approaching where the lifetime membership model may give way to different subscription models if optional working is introduced.

Just open a new thread ‘Are you willing to pay for full MQA decoding in Roon?

Guys, give your polls and suggestions!

I find this confusing, Rob. How is the lack of MQA decoding in Roon Bluesound’s issue, when I can decode MQA just fine with my Bluesound player and its app, but, I can’t through Roon? That sure sounds like Roon’s issue to me, no?

In fact, there are currently no MQA-enabled DACs which can handle MQA through Roon, so again, that would appear to be a Roon problem. I admittedly don’t have all the evidence, so I’m prepared to be educated here

Granted, this all feels far too confusing than it ought, and trying to get the full picture has been a bit of an easter egg hunt.

I don’t know, Chris. I feel like MQA files aren’t properly recognized in Roon, since I can play them elsewhere without issue. Perhaps my thinking on this is far too simplistic…

It’s not Bluesound’s fault per se, but it is their problem to cure. A couple of others had it and have cured it. Bluesound are on it but it is taking them a little longer. I think actually the ‘blame’ might lie with MQA really. Roon have no technical problems with MQA. It’s a business issue I think.

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The bottle neck was Roons’. Of that there is no dispute. But that was sorted and the information put out to enable certain streamers to deal with MQA. And some such as Lumin took care of that very quickly. Bluesound have been slower in addressing the issue, and as their app does the job just fine it isn’t that surprising that it isn’t their very highest priority.

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What about dCS? Wondering if this is delaying the Rossini MQA update.

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Thanks, Henry & Paul. Much obliged!

So, Henry, are you saying that Roon now passes MQA through to Lumin devices for proper processing without issue?

Paul, as a customer, I really like the sound of MQA, personally (don’t mean to stoke the fire of whether or not MQA is beneficial), but MQAs business model seemingly feels like more of a shakedown every day!
Everyone and their Grandmother seems to have a business issue with these folks! LOL

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Roon passes MQA to anything untouched. Lumin I believe had the same issue as Bluesound but cured it.

Thanks, Miguelito. I’ve seen this response from Danny before, and truth be told, I’m not quite sure what it means. I guess Bluesound is “file-based”? Who knows?

I’m going to try as hard as I can to say this while not sounding spoiled. I don’t have the same expectation of immediate gratification in my life as a 12 year-old does, I’m just trying to speak clearly and gain relevant understanding here.

At the end of the day, as a music-lover and a customer, I have no control over the issue or where fault lies. I don’t have an engineering background or the slightest idea of what’s going on “under the hood”, so to speak.

All I know is that I’ve dropped some hard-earned dough on a fantastic Bluesound Vault player and yet more dough on the slickest UI/file-management/music player/front-end around in Roon, and afterwards, I’m STILL using two apps to listen to music! LOL Ah, well. What can you do? First-world “problems.”

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PBluesound are very responsive and proactive. The current issue is partly because of their early adoption. They’ll get there (I have a Node 2 and knew about the problem before I bought it). I slip between the two apps easily and Bluesounds Radio set up is decent. Now there’s an idea - MQA radio.

Here’s the thread on the Bluesound forum: https://helpdesk.bluesound.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3994&sid=6aa40fc38ca66e789d4c8552015de91f

The last update from the Bluesound team was 9/26:

To facilitate the changes required is a chunk of work that we have in the list. It needs to be done in conjunction with some other audio changes based on how it is written. Brain has done a great job in getting into the MQA spirit so to speak, but he did make a substantial change that we need to address.

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I have no doubt they’ll get there in time, Paul.

I don’t want to drag this too far off topic, as I don’t know if/how there is a PM system here, but, Paul, I’d love to hear more about BS Radio feature.

I clicked on Radio Paradise by mistake one time and it sounded good, but, is it just one station? Anyway, that’s off-topic, apologies. Back to your regularly scheduled Bat-programming.

Edit: Thanks, Rob!

It’s just an implementation of Tunein, but reasonably done (and Roon don’t have a proper radio feature). I’m hoping the Radio Paradise link might be able to get the FLAC stream, but I don’t know if it’s possible.

My reading is there are two ways to detect a particular setting:
1- Assume that setting is specified in the header, like a FLAC file’s metadata
2- Pay attention to every PCM packet being sent and switch on the MQA decoding if a PCM packet indicates it’s MQA-encoded

What @danny is saying is that certain systems are designed around ‘1’ and do not “sniff every packet” (aka ‘2’) post initialization. What he’s also saying is that the RAAT SDK didn’t use to provide an MQA flag at initialization and now does, but that BlueSound needs to incorporate the latest release of the RAAT SDK to get this working.

Long story short: BlueSound does ‘1’ not ‘2’ hence they need to know at the start that the file is an MQA file, and to do this all they need to do is update the version of RAAT they are using.

Makes sense?

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