Roon radio Tidal MQA limiting

No, because an MQA file isn’t sent by TIDAL. Roon may select a Master, but TIDAL will return a substitute because the global setting is Hi-Fi quality.

How do you know this? Do you have a reference to cite? I hope this is the case but the signal path info would be invalidated.

I made a mistake and set my tidal to hifi and it definitely sent 44.1 non MQA files. I thought I had an MQA issue but I’d flicked it on my phone streaming settings.

You can try for yourself. Change the streaming setting in your TIDAL account settings (Settings > Services) to Hi-Fi, High or Normal, and play an MQA track from your library.

But this isn’t breaking anything; it’s doing exactly what is expected–you’re asking TIDAL to only serve files of a specific quality. The Signal Path is accurate.

I do have it set to Hifi and Roon Radio has chosen MQA tracks not in my library and played them. Not so sure the setting is observed 100%, yet.

What I would really like is a per zone setting to set the ‘quality’ of both streaming services, alas what we’ve got is a good start.

I’m spending more time with Qobuz lately and until Tidal and Qobuz come to some parity regarding volume leveling I’m afraid I’m not to keen on allowing Roon Radio to roam.

When I had it set wrong it still “played” MQA albums but what came across was Redbook. Took ages for the penny to drop.

To be sure I understand, the signal path reported MQA but your DAC reported 44.1k/16 bit?

Presumably, this was the ‘embedded’ FLAC playing and not the non-MQA file?

I’ve check this with Radio. Of the dozen or so tracks played, 4 were identified in the Now Playing screen as MQA releases, but the Signal Path showed 44.1kHz 16bit. As expect when TIDAL is set to Hi-Fi.

This tells me the signal path is not accurate in these cases or it’s playing the embedded FLAC.

Regardless, I’m enjoying the music.

Why? The signal path is spot on; it’s telling you that the file isn’t MQA. If you’ve told TIDAL not to send MQA it won’t. If Roon requests an MQA file, TIDAL will send an alternative according to the streaming settings.

Ok. I would prefer that Radio not select MQA at all so that both Now Playing and signal path were consistent

Don’t subscribe to Tidal then :wink:

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I’m close, waiting for more leveling info to trickle down from Qobuz but I also don’t wish to throw the baby out with the bath water

Roon isn’t selecting the format, it’s selecting the album or track, so what’s the issue?

I believe by virtue of Tidal having both a flac version and an mqa version, Roon is selecting between them

I didn’t try Qobuz for long as, at the time, it didn’t have Android Auto. Choices, choices.

I posted a request to Tidal and asked :thinking:

Roon Radio makes a recommendation based on your listening preferences and the Roon community’s listening preference not the format, i.e. it uses the most popular version. However, by selecting Hi-Fi you are limiting Roon to a 44.1kHz 16bit version of the track regardless of the recommendation.

Roon Radio FAQs

Can I set quality requirements for Roon Radio selections?

For a given track, there may be many different versions, including different sample rates, between what is available in your local library, TIDAL, and Qobuz. Our selections are based on what version is the most popular, even if there are potentially versions with a higher sample rate available. At this time that is not something that can be changed.

https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_What’s_Radio_and_how_does_it_work%3F

I think OP’s question is a reasonable one, and I was wondering along the same lines.

If I set Streaming Quality to Hi-FI and play a TIDAL album for which there is no 44.1kHz FLAC version (see On the Line by Jenny Lewis, for example, which is MQA 48kHz 24 bit only), Roon reports a lossless signal path with “TIDAL FLAC 44.1kHz 16bit 2ch” as the source.

This seems to indicate that 48kHz is being converted at some point to 44.1kHz, or that the displayed data is incorrect either on the TIDAL side or the Roon side.

More broadly, I find it just a bit weird that I can go to my Library and choose an MQA album version to play and Roon will play a different version instead. It seems to me that two design principles of Roon are 1) transparently display the signal path and 2) a digital music collection should be more like a collection of physical media. If you had two versions of an album on a shelf and you chose to play a specific one, it would be very weird if the other version started playing instead.

IMO, if you set streaming quality to Hi-Fi (i.e. no MQA) and MQA albums are still displayed in the UI, then Roon should not choose the MQA version in Radio and should play the MQA version if you specifically choose it. Alternatively, setting streaming quality to Hi-Fi should hide MQA albums in the UI.

Personally, I think there should be a streaming quality option that applies only to Roon Radio, and then there should be separate option to set 16/44.1 versions to a higher priority than MQA in the Library.

Hello Everyone,

I believe this is the reason why you may run into MQA content when you have limited Tidal to “HiFi” in Roon’s settings:

-John

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