Imho, not at all. In fact, when I listen to undecoded MQA it sounds decidedly worse to me. But, in all things audio, you should listen for yourself before deciding if MQA is for you or not.
Currenlty, all Roon will do with MQA is pass it on bit perfect to an MQA DAC so the MQA DAC can do its job. Assuming Roon will get the same decode as Tidal, Roon would be able to decode step 1 which is to 24/96 or the actual audio resolution which ever is lower. You will still need an MQA DAC to get the full resolution decode as well as the time deblurring aspects.
In my (admittedly minimal,)MQA listening so far, I canāt detect any difference between rebook and MQA - even hardware decoded with the Explorer 2. OK, itās not my normal setup but from all the hype Meridian were putting out I expected quite a bit more. Iāll keep playing since I have the Explorer now anyway, but so far itās become a non-event for me.
Whatever others are hearing Iām certainly not - but then I hear very little in terms of high-def music, DSD upsampling etc so my ears might not be the best to trust.
Per rugbys comment, Iāve read various technical articles so far if people measuring undecoded MQA vs redbook, and unlessthe measurements are wrong or not measuring the right things, there seems sound evidence to suggest MQA is technically inferior to Redbook.
Donāt worry, so is everyone else. Iām starting to think it might be designed that way deliberately.
Non of that is my experience. un decoded MQA sounds great on the music Iāve listened to. Technically it is designed to be equal or better than CD. This is the backwards compatible nature and I donāt think Bob Stuart and his team would countenance a lowering of quality. Thatās what MP3 is for.
It may sound different, you may not like it, you may be used to the digital artefacts but that doesnāt mean it is technically worse.
I was at a live gig tonight in a very small venue watching The Wild Ponies and Amythist Kigh. The sound of the Drums (An Early Yamaha Kit) (Eve Selisās Drummer Larry used it when he was over too) hit me as I explained to my friend. Thatās the sound of MQA. Itās just more āRealā to my mind.
Iām not convinced this is correct. I think some of them measure things that are not relevant.
Wrt the information packaged below the noise floor: people talk about being able to measure noise (and it shows up beautifully in the diagrams!) at the 20 bit level, out of 24 bits total. But this is irrelevant: the background noise in the studio (ambient background sound), and in the studio electronics and mikes, and in your own room, is much worse than 20 bits. And I recently read a review of a power amp that was lauded for its extremely low noise, and it was reported as 21 bits below maximum power; but since you probably donāt normally run at 300 W output in your room, more likely 30 W average (or 3), the amp noise is much worse than 20 bits below the signal. So that is measurable but irrelevant.
And some people object to MQA slicing off the upper triangle, but Stuart is obviously right about this being irrelevant: if your content has maximum level signals at 48 kHz, your tweeters will not be happy during their short life.
Now, this is not an endorsement of MQA. Iām not terribly impressed by the audible improvements of MQA in my own comparisons ā I fear my ears are 16 bit. But I am still distressed by the statements about MQA not measuring well, based on correct and meticulous measurements of irrelevant data.
(In all fairness, when I cannot hear any difference between regular 24/96 content and Tidal-streamed MQA content, that is a kind of endorsement ā no other streaming source of regular 24/96.)
Iāve notice that so far all tracks has the blue light. No green so far.
Some are 96, and some are 192. (Or 82 or 18ā¦,what ever it is). And some is just 41/48 ! (With a blue light).
But Iāve also have got pure hires 192, cause the three lights are all white. No MQA. This make me think that Tidal may also will offer hires without MQA, hence why they call it master.
But I can be wrong.
I have not tested this via Roon, but that should tell me the correct bit rate for that album. (Have to add the master to a playlist in order to play Roon)
I have to look one more time for that album. Is there any other way to verifying that Iām actually getting 24/192 uncoded from Tidal.
An other ting is that quite many tracks/albums are 96, so the Tidal MQA will do.
How big that generic MQA profile differs from a dedicated DAC profile may not be so huge.
Has anyone done such tests ?
You are correct. The non MQAs have all white lights. I found the same result with known hi-res flac albums in my own collection. Most of the MQA Masters I added to my Tidal favorites were 24/96, some 24/48. The Cars, Candy-O is 24/192, MQA. Give that one a whirl.
That first light is mode. If itās not MQA (Green) or MQA studio (Blue), the light will be white. The two additional lights are specific to resolution. Second light is 88.2/96, Third light is 176.4/192.
To be fair I did say it wasnāt my measurements and I didnāt know if what they were measuring was the right thing or not (I have a degree in Physics but donāt measure audio signals and never have). But at least its measurements of some sort, since there seem to be none from MQA themselves, simply them seemingly saying other people arenāt measuring correctlyā¦
Anyway, my point really was I dont hear much of a difference. Not better or worse than CD, decoded or undecoded. Read into that what you will - could be my hearing, my kit, MQA not living up to the hype, or any other number of reasonsā¦
That said, I do hear other things - differences in kit, differences in using room correction etc, and those differences are often profound and obvious, which was what I was expecting from MQA releases based on the hype.
Note that with BluOS devices now in the mix (as of this morning - yeah!), Roon is indicating āLosslessā - i.e. ābit-perfectā delivery of the 48/24 MQA stream to BluOS devices, yet the devices are not recognizing the MQA stream.
Does this mean that BluOS devices do their MQA unfolding/decoding ahead of time within their associated control apps? One could see how this might be acceptable - if all BluOS devices use the same DAC (to get the full benefit of MQA).
So the big question is: Will Roon 1.3 remedy this problem?
Every DAC recognizes the 48/24 as bit perfect.
My HifiBerry Dac has no problem doing this.
Roon 1.3 should unfold up to 24/96, hardware certified MQA Dacs should be able to fully unfold MQA up to whereverā¦
If I understood this MQA Business correctlyā¦
I donāt think 1.3 will solve the problem, (1.3 should solve the problem for people that donāt have MQA hardware). That is unless your device doesnāt contain MQA hardware.
To my knowledge Roon 1.3 wonāt be software decoding/unfolding anything, not initially anyway.
It will pass through bit-perfect to a hardware MQA DAC for full decoding there (which it already does anyway)
I also agree, undecoded MQA files sounds worse compared to a regular FLAC, atleast through a Chord DAC (which use a ālong filterā).
Actually I bought a Meridian Explorer2 on the January sale and cannot say that I am that impressed by MQA even using hardware decoding.
Yes the Explorer2 sounds clearly better playing MQA compared to regular FLAC, but the same FLAC sounds much better through a Chord Mojo. Compared to MQA through the Exporer2 the Mojo does not sound quite as spatially āseperatedā nor as ācloseā which is initially impressive when listening to MQAā¦
But the Mojo has much larger sound stadge, much better detail retrival, small sounds from the audience etc that are lost through the Explorer2 playing MQA, better musicality. Explorer2 playing MQA sounds quite artificial in comparision, more like a sequence of sounds rather than a musical event, instead of hearing the tones evolve over time they seem broken into pieces. (if that makes sense ā¦ you might need to hear it yourself to understand what I try to describe)
