Same with Pro-Ject D2S.
That is unlikely to happen.
Because MQA believes itself to be an end to end process, it wants the first word from encoding to the last word at rendering.
On the rendering count, that effectively means it must occur in the DAC with zero DSP or only known and acceptable to MQA DSP to follow before the signal achieves D/A conversion.
MQA is unlikely to relent and allow the possibility of post rendering DSP â which could entail sample rate conversion and/or other digital filtering â that could alter its dictated minimum phase impulse response.
AJ
i would pay an additional fee for an mqa unfold at this point. just to see what itâs about.
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They charge $54.99 for only the first unfold per device, thatâs pretty much considered one can get it free from Tidal desktop app. How much money these guys want to make?
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Not sure itâs that simple.
Audirvana does the 1st unfold and costs $74 total for a license and it cost this (approx) even before MQA 1st unfold came to it.
Iâm not sure itâs as simple as saying A+ only make 74-54=$20 per A+ license.
Audirvanaâs v3 upgrade for existing customers cost $39. So is an MQA license part of that $39? Probably⌠but we have no clue what proportion.
Playing armchair CFO is fun (we all do it) but some things are a little more involved than they may appear.
We donât know if MQA Ltd get 10% or 50% or 90% of that optional $55 Aurender MQA 1st unfolder purchase.
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I wonder whether Roon will charge a separate decoding license to cover the cost. At this point it seems thereâs a possibility but we have to wait for Roon to confirm on this.
Relative to the price of the hardware, it probably doesnât seem to bad to owners.
Not so, Aurender pricing is at the top category, they should able to absorb the licensing cost. One good example is Aurender A10, it was introduced without MQA but it was later added as firmware update to support it for free.
Well your opinion vs the owners Iâve seen on the high end forums seem quite different. They are all over it.
See this thread. A separate charge was floated for discussion as a possibility but ultimately ruled out.
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How is it âend to endâ when you added a DSP process in the middle? End to end means âWe charge licensing fees from one end to the other.â
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What I am saying is that one could upsample with an MQA-specified filter to a higher bit rate (say 384) and apply DSP there. Once you get to a âtrue to sourceâ 384, what is there to recover?
IIRC, someone mentioned that the cost of the licensing is somewhat related to the cost of the device it is in. For Audirvana it could be a few dollars. Funny enough it is the same exact binary in all cases (other than platform compilations of the code), the first unfold is universal.
dCS added MQA to Rossini at no cost to the user. Audioquest added rendering to the $99 and $199 Dragonflyâs at no cost to the user. The fee is, I think, a way to avoid paying for a small licensing fee for the entire install base.
The âactualâ math from MQA Ltd is:
Fee = max( Bob Stuart 1y Boat Installments Payment, expected fee from each license)
Many MQA hardware playback partners offered MQA upgrade for free, including Lumin complete product line, Esoteric N-01, dCS, PS Audio, etc. These are also Roon Ready or in the process of applying for Roon Ready.
Berkeley also charged a fee for MQA (rendering), but it is a field-installable hardware upgrade instead of a software upgrade.
So how do MQA demand that you charge for MQA? A one off fee to them, or on a per unit licensed to the end user basis?
It is very clear it is per unit licensing, not forgetting, it needs to be certified too, this will also incur additional cost. Since it is an end to end process, fee extraction occurred in different stages from recording, distribution to the end users. What a great way to get rich!
That is a real pity as I would be prepared to pay extra for MQA unfold in Roon / It is unreasonable for Roon to subsidise the licensing costs and reasonable for the patent holders to charge fees for time and money spent on R&D (see the Pharma industry which is out of control)
I donât think they will have long runway for economic returns as I see this space being disrupted very soon by another technology solution like what is happening in the video streaming space (Will Roon ever be supporting MQA? [Answered - Now Live Roon 1.5])
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We will not charge extra for MQA support.
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The short of this is: MQA encoded material (lets stick to 48KHz FLAC files here) includes:
a- About 15 âlosslessâ bits from 0-24KHz audio freq range (ie 0-48KHz sampling freq range).
b- Lower bit depth resolution from 24KHz-48KHz audio freq range (itâs probably something like 7 bits depth or so), which is recovered in the first unfold.
Above 48KHz audio freq (ie 96KHz sampling freq), thereâs no real information at all restored by MQA, it just uses very slow rolloff (ie min phase) filters (determined in the rendering info bits) to upsample. This choice is supposed to minimize phase shifts as we get closer to 48KHz audio freq, but it doesnât include real info.
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