When I play MQA tracks from Tidal on my non MQA DACs with Core Decoder enabled and the device set to no MQA support Roon appears to be doing an unfold beyond the file’s stated resolution.
Example
When I play these same tracks on my DACs with MQA decoding and rendering with the Core decoder disabled they play at the expected resolution.
Ie. the track above shows 48kHz.
This is what I’d expect to see on the non MQA DACs as well.
I’ve just upgraded to Tidal HiFi Plus after having the hifi plan for some time.
When I had the equivalent of Hifi Plus in the past I’d never noticed this behaviour.
Is this the expected behaviour and/or can someone explain what’s going on here?
Thanks.
Edit.
I just tried a track that behaves as expected with a non MQA DAC and Core Decoder on.
As far as I can tell the issue seems to just be with MQA 48kHz being unfolded to 96 kHz by Roon Core Decoder
There’s no issue here, this is how MQA works. The first unfold (core decoding) is always to 88/96 when the base file is 24/44 or 24/48. When using a DAC to do core decoding it is also doing this but instead of showing this on the display it shows the input sample rate.
When Roon (or Tidal’s own app) does the core decoding a DAC capable of MQA rendering will show ORFS to indicate it is receiving an MQA signal that has already been core decoded. A DAC that doesn’t support rendering will just show 88/96 (the results of the core decoding done upstream).
