Roon, TIDAL and MQA

Audio Gear Talk MQA
62

Yay!!! I take back my Bah Humbug.

63

Solved. I downloaded the desktop app. Would help if I read through the thread.

2 Likes
64

There seem to be more available than are listed on the “Master” page. If you click on one of the artists listed on the Masters page, you can find many more releases. Zeppelin, Sabbath, Petty, Bowie, Doors, Dead, for instance.

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65

I understood that they have been converting for a very long time. <<

That’s right–WB has been working with them to develop the conversion process. Formal “agreement” was announced last May. Much info at Stereophile, including in this interview with MQA’s Spencer Chrislu.

66

How are you determining what’s MQA and what isn’t?

67

Find an album with a duplicate, say The Doors s/t, play both, one shows as HIFI and the other shows as MASTER.

Hopefully, either Tidal or Roon will come up with a filter or some sort of indicator so we can easily know which is which.

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68

I hope that’s round the corner.

69

Well they only list Parachutes for Coldplay but their other albums are Hi Res on Tidal too now.

CJ

70

It’s like being a kid a Christmas, checking the presents…

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71

Anyone MQA equipped with SQ impressions on the Tidal/Roon stream ? A/B with Redbook or HiRes ?

72

Can’t be bothered just now, just feasting on all this MQA. That will have to come later…

73

Stairway. That is all.

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74

According to the Tidal Masters FAQ there are 30K tracks and thousands of albums in Master quality:

HiFi Members:

All you need is your TIDAL HiFi membership to access thousands of master-quality albums only through the TIDAL desktop application. When you are in TIDAL desktop application, go to “What’s New” and select “Masters” in the Albums section.

How much music is available in Master quality?

We have music over 30,000 tracks from Warner Music Group, our TIDAL artist owners and key independent labels. We will continue to add more master-quality content over time.

75

So far, I’m hard pressed to hear any difference between the Tidal MQA decoded versions and the HD versions I have locally. Quite pleased.

5 Likes
76

I counted 199 “MASTER” albums today as well. All of the ones that I tested with the TIDAL desktop client on Mac OS X were 32-bit (integer), 88.2kHz or 96kHz after software MQA decoding (I don’t have an MQA capable DAC and have no plans to buy one).

Here are the settings that I’m using in the desktop client (I assume you’d want to enable “Passthrough MQA” if you have an MQA capable DAC):

Here’s what I see on Midi settings on the Mac while a MASTER track is playing:

All of the albums that I’ve tried so far sound great…probably the “HIFI” versions sound great too. I have not bothered to A/B them.

Looking forward to seeing MASTER playback with software MQA decoding (and convolution for room correction…a separate topic) in roon!

– David

77

Hey Joel, so much activity on this topic, apologies if my question has been answered above or in the other Tidal MQA threads that are popping up - when will MQA be supported by Tidal through the Roon Remote App?

If anyone else can answer, appreciated in advance

78

What exactly is your question?

Roon already supports MQA in that it can pass MQA files bit perfect to an MQA DAC.

Also MQA downloads are already identify and flagged as MQA by Roon.

Tidal files are not identified and flagged by Roon yet and you can only get some indication that they are MQA when you play them from Tidal and see they are 24 bit in the signal path. From a few things in the threads here I think there will be some improvements in this area with 1.3 which should be coming soon.

Roon does not yet decode MQA files no indication if that is coming soon or not, unless someone from Roon chimes in.:smiley:

79

I think that’s the question. Certainly it’s my question.

80

Would really like this feature. Hope Roon is working on it!

81

No announcement as yet, but the fact this is happening in Tidal holds great promise for the same thing in Roon.