Roon 1.5 Feedback Thread

[Miracle1980]

Thank you. I will have a look at the duplicates once I get back home…

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

Also I think the other half is not going to understand why when she searches now there can be up to 3 versions of the same album.

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

Just a heads up, since we’ve been having to do a fair amount of moderation to keep this thread on topic.

This thread is for feedback about Roon 1.5, not the place to debate the merits of MQA as a format, discuss how MQA sounds, etc.

There are plenty of other threads on this site where the merits of MQA are being discussed in isolation–if that’s the discussion you’re looking for, please take it somewhere else.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

Upsampling is a special case–it’s impossible preserve MQA rendering instructions across a sample rate conversion

This is understood but can/should some MQA signal info still be carried through, in order to show ‘MQB’ on the Pro-Ject S2 DAC, even after Roon up-sampling?

Like this chap described yesterday:

Roon 1.5 Feedback Thread

This gentleman is doing Roon up-sampling to DSD256 and still seeing MQB on the same DAC’s screen - hence my confusion https://community.roonlabs.com/t/pro-ject-pre-box-s2-digital/29726/622?u=sean2016 I personally don’t care myself since I don’t have an MQA DAC but my old man is obsessed with seeing MQA or even MQB on his DAC’s screen, and is not seeing it the way the gentleman above apparently is, with Roon up-sampling. So by MQA signal carrying through, it’s not for further rendering …

No rendering instructions required after up-sampling obviously.

[Geoff_Mirelowitz]

@brian Thanks for your help. One follow up regarding DSP settings.

On my Roon settings page my DSP engine is enabled. All the settings below it, the “DSP Presets” are disabled.

You wrote:

You don’t have to worry about the details unless you are trying to get a really specific outcome that is not in the category of “the way most people would want it to work”. A lot of effort/thought has gone into taking MQA (a very complex product/idea) and removing the need to understand it top to bottom in order to just listen to music.

With that in mind – because I DON’T want to worry about the details – are these Roon settings on my Meridian Explorer 2 DAC the ones I need?

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

This is understood but can/should some MQA signal info still be carried through, in order to show ‘MQB’ on the Pro-Ject S2 DAC, even after Roon up-sampling?

No. That’s not possible

Like this chap described yesterday:

I suspect that he was mistaken, and that a screenshot of the signal path would tell the truth.

With that in mind – because I DON’T want to worry about the details – are these Roon settings on my Meridian Explorer 2 DAC the ones I need?

There’s nothing wrong with your settings, but I’m uncomfortable saying they are “the ones you need” because people will interpret that as a recommendation. You should be able to configure DSP however you like. If you have some, Roon will do the right thing. If you have it all turned off, it will do the right thing then too.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

I suspect that he was mistaken, and that a screenshot of the signal path would tell the truth.

Cool bananas, all good. I’ll ask him for some screenshots. It may (or not) help my old man sleep better at night.

[Geoff_Mirelowitz]

Understood. Let me pose it another way. With my DSP enabled but all the DSP presets disabled will Roon give me any of the benefits of DSP?

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

No–this is what I was trying to explain before. All that switch does is act as an extra bypass on the filters in the list below. If all filters are turned off, then that switch is doing nothing but looking pretty.

[Geoff_Mirelowitz]

So…to enjoy any benefits from DSP I need to enable some or all of the DSP presets?

If I understand you – VERY large “if” I know – you are saying DSP doesn’t matter much to someone like me who doesn’t want to fool around with it, when I am listening to MQA. Because as you also said:

A lot of effort/thought has gone into taking MQA (a very complex product/idea) and removing the need to understand it top to bottom in order to just listen to music.

But…I also listen to non-MQA files. So I might want to enable DSP and use its presets to improve that listening experience. Are you saying I can do that and those settings will not interfere in any way with my getting the best MQA sound that is available through my system when I play MQA files?

[bevan_court]

I’ve got to agree, setting my Project as a renderer only make a massive difference. I’m thinking that my nuc core is doing a better job of deciding the mqa.

[John_Eaton]

My feedback: I am thrilled to be able to, now at a glance, see the MQA logo in both the Album and Artist views. No longer will I have to go through the process of copy and pasting from the Meridian MQA spreadsheet into the search function within Roon, selecting 3 or 4 album covers before finding the MQA version, then tagging it as “MQA”.
I did however get up to 607 tagged MQA albums.

Wonderful work guys, much appreciated!

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

But…I also listen to non-MQA files. So I might want to enable DSP and use its presets to improve that listening experience. Are you saying I can do that and those settings will not interfere in any way with my getting the best MQA sound that is available through my system when I play MQA files?

The answer to that depends more on your personal biases than on the technical details of Roon.

Whatever DSP settings that you select will be applied appropriately in both situations. For example, upsampling MQA doesn’t make sense when a renderer is at the end of the chain, so we don’t do it, but it’s possible for EQ, Room Correction, Volume Leveling, and others to be combined with MQA freely, so we do.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

No–this is what I was trying to explain before. All that switch does is act as an extra bypass on the filters in the list below. If all filters are turned off, then that switch is doing nothing but looking pretty.

This seems to directly relate to my confusion about having to set the settings to ‘No MQA support’ in the compatibility settings, in order to get 1st unfold plus Roon up-samping working.

Maybe a red message should show up in Roon DSP settings basically explaining the settings aren’t in effect unless you do blah blah blah in the MQA settings.

Not an elegant Roon like solution but at least may prevent the confusion?

I’m sure there’s an elegant and intuitive solution somewhere.

[Paul_Butler]

Just wanted to say thanks. MQA sounding good, loving versions, FLAC radio awesome (pity about RP, but im sure there is a solution). Great job as usual. Best software subscription experience i have ever had

[Geoff_Mirelowitz]

This seems to directly relate to my confusion about having to set the settings to ‘No MQA support’ in the compatibility settings, in order to get 1st unfold plus Roon up-samping working.

@dabassgoesboomboom where are these “compatibility settings” you are referring to?

[dabassgoesboomboom]

@Sean2016 where are these “compatibility settings” you are referring to?

Taken from someone else’s post since I can’t do this myself right now:

See “MQA Compatibilities”

[Geoff_Mirelowitz]

You mean “MQA Capabilities.” Got it. Thanks.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

@brian

Just to recap the experience yesterday to get MQA + Roon up-sampling working for my old man, over Team Viewer (isn’t technology amazing - we take so much of this stuff for granted).

Forget about my silly misunderstanding of MQB with up-sampling, that isn’t relevant to the below:

Step 1: The S2 DAC wasn’t recognised by Roon - I manually selected it (I know you’ll look into this).

2. After the S2 DAC was selected, Roon automatically selected ‘Core decoder and renderer’ as the default.

3. I then went to Roon DSP and enabled DSD512 up-sampling. No luck, the S2 DAC would only see 88/96kHz incoming sample rate. I now know the reasons but at the time yesterday, the reasons were not intuitive at all.

4. After much fluffing around, I randomly played with the MQA compatibility settings and randomly selected ‘No MQA supported’. Again, at the time not intuitive, although now it’s clear why this is the correct solution.

This isn’t a complaint - just feedback.

My 70 y.o old man had 0% chance of getting this to work.

I (now) know up-sampling is a special case and the number of 70 y.o’s doing Roon MQA + DSD up-sampling might be extremely low for Roon not to really care - that’s ok too. Roon know me well enough from our communications to know this is just very respectful feedback.

I personally enjoyed the challenge of getting it to work (I know, that’s sad) but the old man had no chance.

It’s all working now though and sounding fantastic according to him.

Keep up the continued fantastic work.