@danny - I’ve a look at MQA partner lists:
http://www.musicischanging.com/customer/our-partners
and I can’t see “roon” there.
Why?
Roon appears as a partner in material published for CES, the website probably needs updating.
That website is missing a lot of partners. This was posted on the MQA Facebook page from their CES 2016 booth:
Is the plan here to allow Roon to decode MQA into the original PCM bitstream? Or just make sure it passes through the encoded stream (which should not require any work at all)?
Sorry if it’s been asked… Just unclear what’s happening with this…
Yes… and to answer your next question: We don’t have a release date yet.
Roon already does that since since it can be setup to be bit perfect (turn off crossfade, normalization and make sure signal path is not showing any manipulations to the audio stream).
[quote=“danny, post:24, topic:88, full:true”]
Could this MQA support affect the subscription price at some time ?
Will today’s life time subscribers benefit from this MQA support ?
I would regard the MQA decoding as a software feature like playing DSD, stream TIDAL, or similar. I do not see why this would affect Roon’s price - which arguably supports metadata more than anything else.
According to Auralic, there will be no MQA output allowed on digital outputs.
So no MQA support by Roon allowed. to quote:
It is unfortunately that MQA has decided to pull back the integration on ARIES/ARIES LE during CES as they have decided to make it an ‘end to end’ technology which means it will always requests a MQA certificated DAC to work. ARIES ARIES LE, will be able to playback or stream music contains MQA format but will not listed MQA certificated device, to benefit from MQA, you will need a MQA certificated DAC and this is the only way. We are sorry about the decision made by MQA
AURALiC They have decided not to do on any digital output, also not on software side, like JRIVER or Roon, at least at right moment.
@danny, can you confirm this news? Any logic behind it you can share (if true)?
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Can @danny also give his comments what impact this will have with MQA’s integration with Tidal?
Thanks.
I’m confused at this point… Will Roon support MQA? ETA?
Thx.
I can not. My hands are tied. @R1200CL summed it up well:
It is our plan to support MQA. And because of Roon Certified USB DACs and RoonReady, we are in a unique situation to do something with MQA that no one else is. I can’t speak to this any further, but things are rolling.
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Much appreciate the update and honesty @danny. Will just sit tight and enjoy the great stuff you already have in place.
A quite credible explaination about Auralic:
I like to add that Bob and MQA should speak out. Unless there is an issue with Apple behind the scene, they have nothing to loose, and all to win in an open approach.
Sonos owners can forget MQA as well. But is that realy an issue.
Apple my be if AirPlay does not support 24/44.1 & 24/48.
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/mqa-ces-27127/index12.html#post500444
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/mqa-ces-27127/index12.html#post500579
When the decode is done in a DAC, it is done FOR the specifics of that DAC chips properties. Software decoder just does something “generic”, which is good, but not the best. This is why Roon is in a special position, as we certify DACs and can pick the right decoder profile for the right DAC.
As for Bob and MQA speaking out, its clear you aren’t a Meridian customer… they aren’t famous for communication 
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MQA could be a number of things in Roon. It could:
-
provide the complete claimed benefits, meaning unpacking to 192kHz or better with time smear correction;
-
unpack only leaving any time smear correction to an MQA DAC;
-
neither unpack nor correct, simply passing the file to an MQA DAC.
The first and second scenarios would both be welcome. If I could feed HQP time corrected 192kHz files and have continued access to it’s DSD upsampling and filters then it’s win win all round.
One day we will find out which scenario MQA intend to implement. The strange thing is that they give every appearance of not knowing themselves.
Danny,
does that mean upon Roon certification for a DAC, you know enough about the inner structure and capability of this DAC to make the DAC encode full MQA with the right profile information given by the Roon stream?
No need to be an MQA certified DAC then - “just” Roon certified would be sufficient?
Ideally, we’d include MQA testing in our process of certification.
Also, MQA certified DACs have the MQA decoder in them, so they don’t need Roon or any other decoder.