Removing MQA metadata in songs for non-MQA devices?

Arash · April 12, 2020, 2:40pm

Dear Roon,

I’m not sure to what extent this feature request is even possible, but I’ve noticed Roon manages to preserve the MQA metadata when DSP is being used (Big props for that feature ), so I was wondering if it would also be possible to remove the MQA metadata when it’s being played on a non-MQA supporting device? I’d love to see this feature if possible. Thanks again for all the support.

Kind regards,

Arash

ged_hickman1 · April 12, 2020, 2:47pm

Not that I have to understand it as it’s aimed at the roon team. But could you explain what you mean a bit more please?

Arash · April 12, 2020, 2:52pm

The MQA metadata being used for the second unfold. For non-MQA players this will only be interpreted as extra noise.

Chrislayeruk · April 12, 2020, 2:59pm

I don’t think you would notice and Roon knows wether your DAC is MQA aware and acts appropriately.
Perhaps someone from Roon tech could comment

Henry_McLeod · April 12, 2020, 3:59pm

You can do this yourself. Roon would seem to set itself to ‘renderer only’ these days and so it assumes your DAC can render, does the first unfold itself and passes all relevant info to your supposedly rendering capable DAC. If you set Roon to ‘no MQA capability’ it will do the first unfold then not forward (or at least not report the forwarding) of MQA information/control bits.

Arash · April 13, 2020, 5:00am

@Chrislayeruk @Henry_McLeod Not sure this is true.

+1

Henry_McLeod · April 13, 2020, 6:20am

A couple of screen shots.

This one is with my MQA capable DAC set to renderer in Roon.

This one has Roon set to no MQA capability. Roon then discards the MQA information and the DAC treats the first unfold as a normal 96k signal. Note that in both cases Roon performs the first unfold. The only difference is the DAC capability setting.

Arash · April 13, 2020, 6:43am

That has little to do with the second unfold. I think the issue is clear enough for an answer from Roon.

Henry_McLeod · April 13, 2020, 7:00am

I’ve clearly mis-understood your question then, apologies for that. Bear in mind it is a holiday so factor that into the time it takes for the guys to respond.

Chrislayeruk · April 13, 2020, 7:01am

There is no second unfold. The 24/96 signal is optimised for a generic DAC profile The MQA DAC would do further unfolding (Rendering)
That is my understanding from those screen shots

joel · April 13, 2020, 8:32am

This happens automatically. Or, more precisely, the metadata is added back in certain circumstances. The default output of the MQA decoder does not contain the rendering metadata. We call it “MQA Signaling” in the signal path.

This applies to decoded MQA; there is no way to strip out all of the encoded information from un-decoded MQA.

Arash · April 13, 2020, 8:51am

Thanks for clearing that up, @joel . Very nice job to you and the whole Roon development team. Roon’s core decoder is probably the biggest reason why I love it.

Consider the topic closed then. Thanks again.