I noticed the same shortly after purchase of Zen Stream (February’22) and asked iFi support what are their plans regarding MQA support.
The answer was:
“The Zen Stream is essentially a pass-through device and is not designed as a full MQA decoder.
Version 2.31.2 is currently available. it has the option to pass through MQA or not.
Although, It does do a decode from Tidal only Currently. This may change in a future update.”
So you may not be enjoying that feature for a long time 
Nope. I exited the TIDAL app on the Mac and switched my phone off after starting the playlist and the entire playlist kept playing. With TIDAL Connect, the controlling device is out of the signal path once playback is initiated. The ZEN Stream is pulling the stream down from TIDAL’s servers directly, not from the Mac or phone. It’s a funky arrangement…kind-of like playing YouTube videos via Chromecast.
Interesting. Something else to try/test.
David a lot of useful information thanks.
I thought Tidal like Roon has a software license for the first unfold, but I have not tested Tidal connect in some time and I am happy if wrong about this.
I should turn it back on again and test
This sounds fine. Having the option to enable/disable MQA Passthrough on the ZEN Stream would be nice, although I imagine that the default behavior I’ve observed is what 99% of users will want and expect.
I read the “This may change in a future update” bit to mean that, while MQA Core Decoding is currently only available when using TIDAL Connect, at some point it may become available in other modes too, like DLNA. If so, that would not be a terrible thing.
Please let me know what you find.
I imagine that this is part of why Volumio usually requires a Premium subscription to enable TIDAL Connect. I guess iFi Audio paid MQA, Ltd. the license fees for MQA technology up-front, but that’s pure speculation on my part.
I will give it a go.
I have my Stream set to MQA passthrough on with the latest beta so I will test when I get a chance.
There are the colours on the the Zen DAC which should help give us an idea of what is being passed through.
MQA is not a problem for me on the Zen, roon makes the first unfold or if the dac supports the dac does it. The Zen has MQA pass trough as the SMS 200 has.
I think MQA will be maybe more useful for people who do not use roon or have a DAC without MQA, but is an extra tax on the Zen processor for sure.
What I have learn is to never buy a product on a promise, the Zen stream treads are the longest I could find in most forums.
The only thing I desire is that IFi tests every software bug in builds to be sure is not breaking things, and only then release it to the public, because when all is ok people praise a little and when is not people write a lot of bad feedback, and bad feedback is not good for any brand or product, and also declines confidence on a product.
I appreciate your previous responses very much, and I did some further digging back through my discussions with iFi and think I figured out what I had misread, which I’d like to humbly clarify if I may.
First, I agree that iFi falsely intimated in their press materials for the ZS that it was MQA “compatible”, which gave many of their less technologically-invested consumers the impression that it was capable of MQA decoding, especially since it was a new addition to their “Zen” series, and was released around the time that they refreshed many of their devices (including the Zen DAC v2 and Hip DAC v2) with the upgraded 16 core XMOS capable of a complete unfold. At launch, what the ZS was actually capable of doing was either performing an initial unfold for rendering DACs (MQB), or passing through unprocessed MQA streams to DACs with full decoders for MQA or MQA Studio playback.
Then in early December, iFi released a firmware update that suddenly stopped performing the first unfold to pass on via Tidal Connect, and this caused a serious meltdown amongst their consumers—the row was intense over at Head-Fi. Although iFi was not being transparent about the explanation for this (they merely said that they were working on a fix), what actually happened was that MQA corporate rescinded their certification to perform the initial unfold. Unlike the Tidal app, Tidal Connect does not perform the first unfold, and suddenly users with render-only DACs were unable to process MQB Tidal Connect streams. This didn’t portend an issue for me, because my Topping DAC is a full decoder and MQA passthrough wasn’t affected—I was able to achieve MQA Studio playback from the beginning, fortunately.
Because of that, I was at first unclear about what the fuss was all about, and I attempted to come to ifi’s defense on that thread, amidst an outrageous troll fest—which in fairness primarily came from those who either completely misunderstood how MQA works, or were unaware of the differences between Tidal Connect and the Tidal app. IFi kept saying they were actively working on a fix amidst a whirlwind of inaccurate conjecture and accusations flying around, but admittedly they were being very vague about what caused the problem. It was only after quite a bit of back and forth and some vitriol directed my way that Sebastien Chiu PM’d me and explained the licensing obstacles that had emerged, and that they had lost their first unfold certification.
Upon re-reading his response yesterday, what he actually told me was that their workaround-in-process was to attempt to get rendering certification from MQA in lieu of the first unfold licensing that they lost, which apparently grants licensure for all steps of the unfolding process, and has nothing to do with the hardware capability of the device—it’s purely a legal/contractual definition. I have no idea why obtaining that was simpler than just appealing for reinstatement of the first unfold license, but apparently it has to do with the device category the ZS occupies. Obviously they eventually found a successful solution, because they fairly quickly released a new firmware that reinstated the first unfold, and added a new MQA Passthrough tab for Tidal Connect-only to the ZS GUI.
Anyway, it was the rendering certification language that caused my confusion yesterday, and I just wanted to correct any claims I made that were misleading.
Wonder why they lost licensing for core decoding? Anyway, thanks for the clarification that all makes a lot more sense now. I’m looking forward to the stable release that brings Roon Ready out of beta. Also curious to see what iFi does with Volumio 3.
I’ve wondered why as well, but he didn’t specify—all he said was that the politics with MQA and the extent to which they exert control over their trademark is draconian.
As I mentioned in a previous post (which I stated at the end of a text so long I’d be surprised if anyone saw it), I think MQA is a major racket unlike anything else the music industry has ever seen. I do utilize Tidal and appreciate the quality of their masters, but I still feel uneasy about it at times.
Is there anything about Volumio 3 that would impact the actual listening experience? Certainly their GUI is overdue for a major overhaul, but with Roon I never bother with the ZS’s interface anyway…
I don’t know. I’m guessing not. I’m just curious as to how serious they are about keeping it updated and want to see them continue to support this streamer even if most updates are just minor bug fixes or cosmetic. Especially after the rocky start.
Only thing I can think about on the Volumio 3 side is that much of what we get included in iFi Zen Stream is a monthly paid for service. There could definitely be politics there.
@Steven_Klemow thanks going back to review your interaction with iFI, what you have put there makes sense.
We had another member on last night who thought MQA capable meant that it supported it out if the box. While I have heard some very nice sounding MQA albums it does cause a schism in the audio community and maybe we would have been better if it had never been created, because 24/96 was always good enough.
About MQA, I do use Tidal, about 50% of the time. I also use Qobuz, an SACD transport, and a fair-sized library of DSF, FLAC and MQA files I purchased from high res websites. With Roon, I use Tidal for albums that come in MQA Studio; for the rest I use Qobuz or local files and upscale them to DSD 256. And in all cases my decision for which format to use comes down to the quality of the master.
And that’s where my beef with MQA arises. Fundamentally, I think that its originally advertised purpose—smaller file containers—is pretty much obsolete at this point, and they must have known that was coming when they launched. Fast internet and large storage devices are pretty standard now on most phones in consumer price ranges, so there shouldn’t be as much necessity for the ~60% container size reduction for most folks—certainly not for those serious about audio.
But that part is fine. It’s how they have marketed it since that troubles me—with allegations that MQA sounds “better” than other formats, and they never seem to specify which. Surely MQA would sound far better than Spotify’s lossy codecs. But a lot of folks went a step further and said that MQA sounds superior to lossless FLAC files, and that obviously makes no sense.
But if there is any truth to it, it’s because MQA (and probably Tidal) quietly forged proprietary contracts with major studios to have rights to their most pristine masters—i.e. the Provenance/MQA Studio concept Bob Stuart promotes constantly. So of course those files would sound superior to the second or third generation masters other sites have access to.
I think this underscores the monolithic profit matrix MQA has promulgated throughout the entire music industry. Seizure of provenance masters and huge licensing fees for every device, software or streaming service that supports MQA— and that includes every DAC, DAP, network streamer, headset, speaker, sound card, Roon, Tidal, Audirvana, UAPP, and most recently, CD players with their emerging MQA-CD format. It’s literally everywhere, and we’re all paying serious cash for it—that little XMOS chip costs nothing, but the licensing fees are considerable… 
I think early on it made sense for high quality music on mobile, but never really for home/desktop use.
It is surely slowly dieing but more and more MQA devices are coming to market. This could just be a time delay in bringing a product to market.
I don’t think TIDAL and MQA, LTD. are that altruistic. The bandwidth savings was never to benefit consumers. It was to reduce bandwidth costs for service providers, like TIDAL. As far as I’m aware, TIDAL is still not profitable. If the reduction in bandwidth costs due to lossy “MQA compression” is greater than the MQA fees, it’s a simple business decision.
I suspect this is why you’re seeing more and more 16-bit, 44.1 kHz content in TIDAL’s catalog being converted to MQA without the “MQA Studio” designation. Otherwise, there’s no benefit, right? I need to run some tests, but I will not be surprised to find that the network bandwidth required to stream a 24-bit, 44.1 kHz MQA FLAC ends up being LESS than the same album with straight 16-bit, 44.1 kHz FLAC, in spite of the difference in wordsize.
This is not about reducing our bandwidth costs; it’s about reducing theirs.
I can’t argue with that at all.
I can only think that when MQA was being created there was not an abundance of mobile bandwidth so I could imagine a small benefit even if it is not real.
Clearly there are still serious issues for Tidal, but I do like the service still
I wholeheartedly agree. Mic drop. I hadn’t considered the bandwidth reduction benefit for services, wow.
There are some digital recordings from the eighties, when digital was deemed futuristic and superior to conventional analog tape—such as Dire Strait’s “Brothers in Arms”, Billy Joel’s “The Nylon Curtain”, The Replacements “Pleased to Meet Me”, George Michael’s “Faith” and many more—that were unfortunately recorded at 44.1/16 bit and are sadly stuck that way forever. And I’ve encountered several folks who think something’s wrong with their DACs when they are tagged with “Master” on Tidal but remain at 44.1.
But I keep an eye on Tidal’s non-master 44.1 albums, and since I’m logged into both Qobuz and Tidal simultaneously, I’ve found many cases where Qobuz apparently beat Tidal to the race for acquiring original master licensing and they’ll host 24 bit or higher sampling rate versions instead.
And Apple Music has long been aggressive about proprietary remastering, and they hold the rights to the best available versions of vast catalogs as well—especially now that they’ve launched spatial audio, which often demands access to the original 2” mix reels. Some are “Mastered for iTunes” and can’t be accessed anywhere else—and even worse, they’re huge perpetrators of the Loudness War.
The really sad thing is that restoration and remastering is an extremely expensive endeavor, often at the mercy of who owns the DRM rights. And once a decision is made to pursue the process and the rights are secured by one of the above entities, the likelihood of it happening again are greatly reduced.
That’s what worries me about MQA—despite all their lofty claims, it’s still a lossy format, one that requires substantial end-user expense to playback properly, and even in the best of circumstances is not the same as a true lossless format to own—particularly for archival purposes. It’s a long way from Redbook CDs, but I would hate for my favorite music to be held captive indefinitely by such a predatory corporation.
MQA should be extinct, tidal should give the full file without MQA, MQA for me is a curse, some manufacturers support it others not.
But now MQA exists and manufactures include support for not losing sales, but in my view if all brands could give a no to it maybe the format could be extinct sonner than later. The only advantage of MQA is for the ones who created the format and maybe for radio streams.
I completely agree. Unfortunately Tidal is basically owned by a cabal of the richest musical artists alive, and the corporation signed a multi-gazillion dollar licensing deal with MQA that seems pretty irreversible.
However, if you’re frustrated with it, try Qobuz! They have an equally broad artist database, it’s true lossless, and it works with any DAC with no unfolding madness whatsoever. 