MQA software decoding in Roon

sorry :flushed:
could you point me to the latest?:thinking:

I’ll pick that up Christoph and add some links to dev posts in related MQA threads below.

There are more MQA related threads than I would ideally like as a mod, hence the scattered nature of information, but they have adopted lives of their own so we have not aggregated them as aggressively as we could have. It has also been an extraordinarily long saga and users queries like yours are absolutely valid.

I don’t know the ins and outs of why discussions and negotiations with MQA have taken so long, but I do have some knowledge of the current position, and all I can say is that as a user I am very pleased with the broad outline of what lies in store for us. I had become pessimistic that we would see software decoding in Roon at all. Now I am confident it will happen. As to when, I’m not expecting it as quickly as the next major release but I know the Roon devs want to get it to us asap.

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Brian, 1 November 2017:

Danny, 4 November 2017:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/are-you-willing-to-pay-for-full-mqa-decoding-in-roon/32969/56

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I hope Roon will offer MQA decoding very soon as it is very overdue! How soon is a question that we never know for now but do hope there’s some signs…What I know is once MQA decoding happens in Roon, many of us will have a better listening comparison on various formats and those who subscribed to Tidal Hi-Fi will appreciate the playback of Tidal Masters in its fullest form.

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Ah, I see. Thanks for the info!

Brian has confirmed Roon will support first unfolding of MQA:

The CES announcement by MQA is an indication that negotiations have finished and a business arrangement is in place. Implementation will follow.

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Cheers! Great news. :clap::fireworks:

MQA is a big effort to integrate into an existing development so while explectation is high I am sure the deliverable will be some time in development and testing…with all things software a rushed implementation will not do anyone any good.

It will be done when it’s done is as good a way to explain the release schedule as any and would not expect anything to be announced date wise until it is done and at least in testing for a good while.

No different to what we would expect for hardware DAC’s to integrate with Roon Ready etc.

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression MQA had been done for a while, just needed an agreement to turn on the switch.

My guess would be somewhere in the middle?

I wouldn’t do a bunch of coding without an agreement.

Normally until there is a business arrangement developers won’t have full access to a products proprietary details to just drop something in quickly. Unless it’s within perhaps a deal between 2 companies under the same ownership…but probably not even then.

Not to say they might have some advanced info but typically I would expect the full details to be under wraps before anything is signed and sealed and only then made available.

I guess more news will filter out but I still won’t expect anything in weeks …or years but maybe somewhere in the middle…

Some folks might remember that about this time last year a Roon dev said that once mqa supplied their code it would only take a couple of weeks. Of course that might just be for dev time and excluding testing etc. And plans may have changed since then.

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Well we might all be pleasantly surprised but don’t be disappointed if it not is so fast…even if they have had a head start there were a lot of changes just dropped in the last month so that could mean more integration testing is needed.

I don’t develop software so I’m just speaking my gut feel…but I’m not placing bets for January.

My understanding is as per @wizardofoz. The licensing arrangements took a lot longer to conclude than anyone expected, but from a user’s point of view I believe the Roon devs have gotten us a great deal.

Danny asked for feedback in another thread about charging an extra fee at one stage, but that was subsequently ruled out meaning users will get access to MQA first unfold through Roon without an additional charge.

The specifics of implementation are the dev’s story to tell and they’ll be telling it to us all in due course.

No one writes code until licensing is sorted out, so that is now happening.

It’s an interesting thaught if you could pay for a additional full unfold, like pr. album, but as according to MQA , your DAC brand etc need to be known in order for the very best SQ, and they have said they won’t support/allow full SW decoding, even technically fully possible, so I think we’re only will get the first ugami or whatever it was called, even if we where willing to pay.

If I could choose between paying full MQA or full hi res ( which I refer to as 24/192), I would most likely go for hi res. But I would like to compare first to be sure.

This doesn’t has to be a Roon issue as we know Roon support hi res files from Tidal. (Remember the glitch with the polish artist Snowman :snowman::grinning: )

Maybe Tidal could offer a (one time payment ?) package of like, 10, 100, 1000 albums to be yours 4ever available in the cloud in hi res formats. (Any hires or multichannel)

Other ideas could be that non upgradable DACs, could through their manufacturers be offered MQA SW matching their specific DAC through a local Roon add-on.
That business model might be accepted by MQA.
(Personal MQA file key matching your Roon user ID or something )

If the deal allows using Roon up sampling DSP with custom impulse filters beyond the first unfold that will be good. Up-sampling to the maximum rate of the DAC otherwise you are stuck with only 88.2/96kHz first unfold.

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I am hoping for some innovation here. I recall we were told that Roon were planning something quite different compared to other mqa offerings. Here’s hoping that we will be able to use at least some DSP before sending the stream to the rendering DAC.

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What would you propose? MQA is a format owned by another company…

Its already been discussed in either this thread or other related threads. Many of us are hoping that Roon can MQA decode to MQA Core, then apply at least some DSP (normalization, headroom, PEQ), and then send the stream over RAAT to a Roon endpoint to do final rendering. There is no other product available that can do this.

EDIT - the closest example would be the Blusound Node product, which I believe offers tone and volume controls after core decode but before internal rendering.

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