I wouldn’t want my choice to affect my Roon experience, nothing more or less.
No, not for first unfold not worth it.
Having a MQA plug-in means Roon may able to bring in MQA much quicker. Roon don’t even have to worry about licensing as the fee is paid by the users. I will rather pay for a plug-in then to upgrade my expensive Holo Spring DAC which I love it!
Agreed - my opinion (and wish) is the first unfold should be included at no extra charge, for all on a yearly and lifetime membership - like those with Audirvana got the first unfold for no extra charge.
Like you, I’m happy to pay extra for unfolding up to 192k or beyond.
If this is the standoff, and given Roon’s business model, I would do one simple thing: let them simmer.
The probability of MQA breaking out into the mainstream is pretty low in my opinion. You have the following hurdles:
1- On mobile - it just won’t work because iOS and mobile devices are limited to 48KHz output over their standard audio interfaces (you can use USB, but how many people bother?)
2- Labels signing up see the possibility of reselling yet again their catalog - Fat chance these days with streaming
3- MQA’s own actions - They don’t seem to understand negotiation
Me personally, I am sitting pretty and waiting. I ultimately want the best sounding music, whichever way that gets to me. I see technical arguments against MQA have validity.
But for sure: I want Roon to be successful more than I want MQA to be successful!!!
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MQA would be selecting those filters. That’s the whole point.
So I don’t know if this has been answered, but we are told MQA needs intimate knowledge of your DAC in order to determine how it does the final unfold. What that suggests to me is that a full process in Roon can only happen at its best if the DAC is MQA certified. A full unfold to an uncertified DAC is not the full experience. It will be the first unfold with resampling to the native resolution of the original ‘master’.
If that were the case, would MQA would be in their rights to request it is signposted in Roons’ signal path as less than optimal?
If you’re a Roon user you cannot be switching to the TIDAL app when you want to hear a TIDAL track…
Yes I know. The Tidal desktop app is average in many ways compared with Roon, even if it does the first unfold. If it weren’t so average we wouldn’t be here as Roon users.
Negotiate…
I would say Audirvana is probably paying say $5 per license to MQA for its license. Lets say Roon offers MQA to level up to that and allow users to pay $50 lifetime for an MQA license to get first unfold. More than Audirvana because it is not forced on every Roon license. Fine! Full unfold is breaching MQA’s technical design so I imagine that is much harder to negotiate with them. Fine, who really cares, it’s all upsampling anyway.
This might put full software decoding off the negotiating table, but frankly that is to MQA’s disadvantage. They will come around once Roon is a mammoth.
Roon is much much much more than a “nice interface”!!!
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LOL you’re preaching to the converted !!
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Danny said he’d be happy to eat that cost (call it $50 for a lifetimer, per your example) for those that will use it…
So find a way to transparently show Meridian how many people are using it and pay MQA Ltd accordingly. Easy, no?
I partially joke of course - I know it’s not so easy.
I don’t think full unfold is even being considered for Roon in software, partly because I doubt MQA guys allow it, but also because its DAC tailored (or so they say). Thats ok, the last unfold is pretty much just an up-sampling from what I have heard. Its the first unfold that’s important.
For me, full MQA in DAC is useless, because it can’t be combined with room correction which improves the sound much more than MQA does. But if first unfold was available in software, and you could do DSP on that, than that could be interesting. I might even pay a fee to the “other” guys for that.
Funny thing is, I have a full-MQA DAC, but I can’t use MQA to improve the sound unless its done in software, and I send PCM to the DAC. If that isn’t a clear sign of bad MQA design, I don’t know what is.
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Actually I prefer payment. Otherwise it is a free for all without accountability. Anyone playing a track anytime would fall into the user base. And if you do it by month, you open up the possibility of MQA wanting a subscription model.
It’s been discussed many times. In my opinion this is a design more tailored to force hardware licensing than any of its technical merits.
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This is probably the tricky part - the accounting/tracking of who is using it, how to transparently share this with MQA Ltd and how to pay them… then wrap it all up into a contract. Not easy.
As much as I don’t like it, the extra fee is probably the quickest and cleanest/most transparent way to track usage and pay MQA Ltd accordingly.
Agree, everyone with Tidal would probably one time or the other play a MQA track, including me. Some of the MQA versions are better Masters than the Flac versions on Tidal, less compressed, for example. Typically I buy the true high-res versions but for some music I might make due with the MQA version if it was “free for all” in Roon.
Better to have an optional fee for MQA to avoid eating money from the much more important (my opinion) quality improvements in Roon, more stability, no hichups, no connection problems for android devices etc etc.
And to be clear: I prefer that to be first unfold only so there are no issues with breaking MQA’s design, and there’s precedent for this with both the TIDAL and Audirvana apps.
Alternatively, Roon might want to allow for the same pseudo-MQA algorithm that Auralic went with - apparently works great and it is a way for them to put pressure on MQA. After the CES 2016 slap in the face, Auralic was mega pissed and likely will not be in the same room with Bob Stuart ever again.
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I actually would be very happy if Roon had nothing to do with MQA except where it comes in from Tidal, the only time I compared exactly the same track/mix between MQA at full unfold and a 24/192 FLAC the FLAC took the win. I am also still convinced this is just a way to sell us the same old stuff again but for a higher price.
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