It’s a fair question, so I went searching:
The earliest reference I could find was January 16, 2017 just after Tidal introduced MQA Masters. In this interview where Rob Darling was quoted as saying:
“Once we have code from MQA, it should be a matter of single digit days to get it integrated.”
I think it would be fair to call that an “overly enthusiastic” estimate.
In February 2017 Brian walked it back a bit here:
“You’ve been around here long enough to know we don’t put time estimates on anything, but especially not things that involve other companies.
In terms of new features coming, MQA software decoding is our top priority. It’s a top priority for MQA too. We want the same things you do, and we are well aware of the massive demand for this feature.
We’ll share more when there’s more to share.”
In July 2017 Roon introduced MQA detection in Build 242. No news at that time about MQA unfolding.
Then a long silence until MQA announced that Roon was onboard at CES 2018. I understand that this marked the end of negotiations and entry into a commercial agreement. The technical development commenced after this.
In January 2018 Brian confirmed that Roon would do the first unfold when MQA support was released but didn’t give any estimate as to time.
So you can pick either January 2017 or January 2018. Clearly negotiations took a lot longer than expected, but contracts have now been signed and implementation is under active development.
Like Henry, I believe that if for any reason they were not going to unfold MQA then they would simply tell us. What could be gained from sitting on such news ?