I’ve received a further response from Meridian, via my PP…
The Meridian Prime has been fully tested with the MQA developer’s kits and adheres to the correct specification.
It would seem that Roon is not marking the decoded stream as MQA when the parametric EQ feature is turned on. This is likely the cause to why the MQA light is not lit on Prime because the
stream is not (MQ)Authenticated at this point.It is common that many audio playback software’s break the MQA integrity when applying post playback features such as tone controls, EQ and even digital volume attenuation will have an impact. Altering the original source will break the MQA stream.
I believe the customer has already shown that the unchanged MQA signal works as expected and applying an EQ prevents MQA playback. I would suggest this is typical (and expected) behaviour of MQA.