Your second point covers me fine, as I’m running fully MQA-compatible hardware.
All is ask in addition is that Roon identifies MQA files as such, in Album Details page and in the Audio Stream pop-up (etc).
Your first thought is very interesting, as it would require a 32/384 capable DAC as a minimum. Also Meridian own MQA ready DAC Explorer2 is 192, so how would it play 2L content 
Also it seems that Michael Lavorgna post with a requirement of a two way communication which has to be a USB DAC, make some sort of sense, rule out all spdi/f interfaces. We just have to hope for a user select DAC profile would be available, though that seems unlikely at the moment.
If you happen to know the difference between MQA and MQA Studio as Explorer2 has light indicators to distinguish between those two formats, your explainations is very much appreciated.
Hi Brian,
I’m a bit concern…The DAC profiling for MQA requirements as well Roon Ready certification in the future mean they require new DAC in order to work? Does Roon continue the legacy support to existing DAC owners?
[quote=“MusicEar, post:102, topic:88”]
Does Roon continue the legacy support to existing DAC owners?
[/quote]of course it will, Meridian is but a tiny subset of the DAC market and I’m certain many people will not buy a new DAC just to have MQA, especially if the only option is a Meridian product.
@andybob Let me re-phase it… Because of the requirements for MQA(DAC Profiling) and Roon Ready certification, future Roon builds will need a new class of DACs in order to work, it doesn’t matter whether one will use MQA or not. Will my DAC continue to work? I need this confirmation from @Brian or Andrew. Thank You
It is far too early to be speaking about MQA integration in Roon and how it plays out.
If you buy anything based on the promise of MQA, either in Roon, TIDAL, or any DAC, you are gambling. Until it is real, it does not exist. Plans and promises will only lead to disappointments.
The better thing to do is ask and learn what is MQA and what the details, but even then, since it is not released yet, the information is sparse and conceptual in nature, as there is no concrete MQA ecosystem available to the public yet.
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Your DAC will not stop working. Roon is not requiring MQA in the future.
Roon plays back to non-certified DACs via USB all the time, so certification makes no difference here.
Roon also plays back audio bit-perfect, so any DAC that supports MQA will be fed data bit-perfect for decoding by the endpoint. This is no different to DTS encoded files at the moment.
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@danny - couple of questions:
1- Is your expectation that MQA will allow you to decode MQA into PCM?
2- How about a profiled DAC?
3- How about just the MQA decoder downsampling when told max rate is 192, say? Clearly it needs to do this for many mobile devices
- I assume you want higher than CD quality PCM. If so, then I would expect this, as that is the point of a software decoder.
- As per Bob’s talks on the subject, MQA can be tuned to certain DAC chips and to the recording equipment. I would expect a hardware device (I assume this is device is what you are calling DAC, and not the actual chip) would decode MQA to PCM right before it feeds it to the internal DAC chip. I would not expect it to stream out higher rate PCM to SPDIF or something, because it doesn’t know what is in the next stage of the pipeline. I think others may disagree with my interpretation, but as I said above, this is all based on sparse and conceptual information.
- No idea. Obviously they can do this, but who knows what they will allow.
Thanks @danny. Couple of clarifications:
1- I meant that Roon will decode MQA material into a higher rate PCM that could be fed to a standard DAC. Yes, I do mean a full DAC not just a DAC chip.
2- I do understand the “end-to-end” concept as one that includes an output DAC profile. However, making a profiled DAC a must-have is missing the point entirely for two reasons:
a- Amplification, speaker selection, and room clearly have a massively more important effect than a DAC profile
b- If you wanted to compensate for ‘a’ with say Dirac, you would not be able to since at no point you have a PCM stream to manipulate
To me the restrictions spell the demise of MQA. If the motivation is to create a good impression then I think MQA’s efforts are misguided - either the tech stands on it’s own, or it is so restrictive noone will care.
Speaking for myself, I have completely lost interest.
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@danny Thank you for your assurance. These whole DAC profiling and certification stuffs are driving me crazy… I will take my leave now to enjoy my music 
Hi Danny, I got one more question. What happen if Tidal decide to flip the switch to MQA, will it continue to stream 16/44.1 Redbook FLAC or convert all its Hi-Fi Premium service to MQA only?
Hi MusicEar,
In December @palbratelund said:
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge (or sloshed around in all directions near the bridge) since then.
Thanks Andrew, this is a good news.
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3 posts were split to a new topic: Upsampling Tidal through HQP
So long as Roon says it’s playing bit perfect to your DAC then any MQA Enabled DAC with the right firmware will decode the MQA files. I’m looking forward to listening to the 2L demo files on my Prime Headphone Amp (bought before it was announced that it was MQA Ready, I should add) on Tuesday once I’ve updated my firmware.
In my ideal world, Roon would do three things, recognizing which one based on end point:
- minimal mqa mode, no recognized endpoint, so decoding and rendering af highest end point bitrate
- medium mqa, recognize the dac, and based on dac capability
- decode and render, compensating for that dac, stream max bitrate for that dac
- stream bitperfect to dac to allow it to decode and render
- max mqa, recognize meridian speakers, decode, send in mhr allowing speakers to render
Lets see what we’ll get 
I’d settle for the last one, but we may be barking up the wrong tree here…
Added that one with you in mind
I’m using Roon with my 818v3 and MQA is working fine. I’m very happy!