Roon Ready MQA DAC recommendations

Yes, I’ve been tracking that, and was originally considering the Gumby Gen 5 upgrade. Decided to go the EITR route since it allows for connection to other products such as my AVR. Appreciate the info.

I want to know, whether all MQA capable DACs fully “unfolds” MQA encoded signal in the same highest quality way? The cheapest one and the most expensive Meridian? Can anyone from MQA corroborate this?
If not - I don’t understand something…

The Explorer2 is primarily bound by its environment. So it takes what power it is given and it is connected using sub optimal 3.5mm jacks. This goes for the other similar USB bus powered devices. If a device like that is limited further to squeeze it artificially into a price:performance bracket that keeps it in its place is not anything we would know up front. But you wouldn’t want it stepping on the toes of anything that costs a bit more!

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Different certified MQA devices do not necessarily render in the exact same way, but all of them passed the specific performance criteria set by MQA Ltd. To put it simply, the certification process made sure certified MQA devices sound the best they possibly could when playing MQA music.

That is not to say that all MQA devices sound the same, they don’t. A $200 device is never going to sound the same as a $20000 device.

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Probably I was misunderstood - I’m taking MQA full unfolding process as a standalone separate “blackbox” (don’t bother now what is in the input and outpoot of that “blackbox”). Now I want to know only this: is this " blackbox" in every MQA DAC the same highest quality, or is different, depend on price…

If I will know this - I can deal with everything else…

My understanding is that an MQA certified DAC should be doing the same unfolding as any other at the analogue outputs (where the ultimate sound quality will then vary obviously). Somewhat bizarrely I think, given the association of MQA with Meridian, it’s Meridian DSP Loudspeaker owners who have the most limited options as they don’t have the analogue route available…

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No. The E2 for instance has a resolution ceiling of 192/24. That means the highest PCM resolutions can’t be achieved.

So the difference is in the second stage rendering then, subject to the max sampling rate of the DAC? There are still two stages being completed, i.e first unfold then rendering? If so, I guess that being able to go to a higher sample rate doesn’t automatically mean that the sound coming out of the analogue inputs is better, depending on the quality of the analogue output stage (and perhaps other things)?

It is still doing everything it should and the information will all be there. It just won’t be rendered at the full original resolution but a lower one in keeping with the DAC. On the surface that is the only difference looking at the process minus the environmental considerations.

The E2 ceiling of 192/24 is not a big limitation given that there are not many MQA files out there with a higher resolution than this.

See the charts here.

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But is it as good? I don’t know…

If every DAC was as good as any other at the analogue outputs, we would only ever need to buy the cheapest that had the required functionality. Oh, and looked good of course :grinning:

All New IFI Nano Black Label around 250 best budged device MQA and ROON

Not quite - It is an MQA renderer, so requires a first unfold to be done prior to the signal being fed to it. For now this means no Roon+MQA for this device.

So,just to be clear today Roon can’t do any of the unfolding that an ifi BL would require (purchased last week) for MQA? If that is the case I will stop wasting my time, as I thought Roon was able to do it’s part and pass along to the MQA/renderer (i.e., ifi iDSD Nano BL).

Works with the PC app/Tidal as mentioned previously.

Thanks

That’s cool. If you want MQA to be a primary element of your setup but didn’t buy a fully functional MQA DAC then obviously Roon isn’t what you need right now.

Roon -today- (possibly soon) does not do the first unfold required by renderers such as the Ifi or Dragonfly. It does pass on the proper data to full-decoding DACs. To get the first unfold you would have to rely on either TIDAL or Audirvana (Mac only), -today-.

I would not call it “wasting your time”… Roon is so much more than what I would call “better in some cases, same in some others” MQA decoding.

Don’t misunderstand me, I have a subscription to Roon and use it daily, this is just a one-off I have been playing around with. I absolutely enjoy using Roon and will continue. I wish some of these low-cost DAC manufactures would indicate that their product is a renderer and not fully capable of doing MQA.

Thanks for the reply.

I actually communicated with Ifi on this asking for clarity. The person said “decoding”. I insisted. It does not decode, it just renders. Yes, it is a bit deceitful advertising in my opinion.

Over at Head-Fi it took some coaxing on the announcement thread until iFi finally acknowledged it’s a renderer and not a full decoder. Seems like a nice portable DAC though…just not going to get you there with MQA in Roon…yet.