MQA tracks not playing correctly in Roon (ref#AYCMY0)

Support
1

What’s happening?

· Other

How can we help?

· None of the above

Other options

· I want to report a metadata issue

Describe the issue

MQA Tracks are not being correctly played by ROON

Describe your network setup

SMSL M400 Windows 11 Roon Server

2

You do know that Tidal removed most MQA? The signal path says that this is not an MQA file, and the signal path looks at the actual data. The format info on the album may not be updated yet, but that’s just text and can be wrong.

3

Hello @MarinRene,

Thank you for reaching Roon support.
Tidal is replacing MQA with high resolution lossless flac files. Some lower resolution MQA files are being replaced with CD quality flac files.

Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.

4

Dear Vadim,
Thank You for your kind response.
The real thing is that most Tidal’s MQA Files just have the metadata changed.
APPS like USB AUDIO PLAYER PRO are capable of analyze the content of the file and detect it as MQA so it can be played perfectly.
Is there any option to instruct ROON to do the same?
Thank You.

5

Dear Suedkiez, by the opposite.
Many times the format info does not says it is MQA but ROON detect it and play it accordingly.

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6

Both things can happen, I guess. As I wrote, the signal path is what is correct because it is based on the actual data, while the format info in the album view is just text and can be wrong.

But Tidal did, of course, remove most MQA (though not all) and therefore it has been more frequent that the format info still said MQA although the files weren’t anymore.

Plus, your example is not one where “the format info does not say it is MQA”. In this case, different tracks simply have different formats, and hence the format info says “mixed” and nothing specific.

7

Hello @MarinRene,

hereChanges on Tidal’s side regarding MQA tracks are described in more detail .

As noted in their statement:

"While we have at least 16-bit, 44.1 kHz FLAC versions for nearly all MQA tracks today, we may not have a replacement for every single one. We are working hard to ensure all previously available MQA tracks will be replaced with a FLAC version in a timely manner."
When playing a track in Roon, the actual signal path reflects the true quality of the file being streamed. However, the track metadata (such as file type or resolution) comes from the Tidal API and may still show outdated information.

Unfortunately, since this metadata is provided directly by Tidal, there’s not much we can adjust from the Support side to correct these inconsistencies.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.