It’s already been explained that the Hegel only supports certain sample rates as an incoming stream. It doesnt support 48khz or 96 or 192 only floating point sample rates so it’s never going to pass any mqa that’s encoded at 48 as it doesn’t support that input decided 48 goes to 96 after decode so it’s also not supported. Roon does what the device tells Roon it supports. MQA can be 44.1 or 48 so the 44.1 one’s will use the core decoder. They still get resampled down to the rate Hegels DAC operates at by the device which Roon shows after RAAT.
Roon has no visibility of coax inputs as they don’t report back. The Hegel resamples this input internally to 105.47 for anything coming in. This has been explained by Hegel. Roon shows this up as to be Roon Ready they have to be honest and show the entire signal path.
@Anders_Ertzeid I 100% understand that the Hegel H120 wants 44.1 or 88.2. I want to try and understand why the Roon core decoder does not first unfold to 96kHz and then convert to the 88.2kHz stream that the Hegel H120 accepts. I tried the same song with Qobuz and with Tidal. The expected conversion from 96 to 88.2 is indicated with Qobuz.
Read through this entire thread. It looks like the Hegel first downsamples from 96 to 88.2 or 48 to 44.1. Then it takes the resulting resolution and upsamples to 105.47. So, you are receiving a file of 96 from Qobuz and 48 from Tidal.
No, Roon is not downsampling. This is all being done by your Hegel. Read this thread, it is explained. But yes, the Roon decoding it skipped evidently. Use a different DAC if you don’t like how the Hegel works.
Not true Jim Roon is downsamplng as its before RAAT to the Hegel.In this example you have a 48khz MQA it cannot be decoded to anything other than 96/24 the Hegel can’t accept 96/24 so Roon is down sampling it 44.1 and breaking MQA decoding. There is likely some logic as to why it’s not doing the core decode before doing this or why it can’t just let the Hegel do it itself.
What are the MQA settings in Roon @Evan_Stevens ? Is core decoding on, is the Hegel set to no MQA for the device MQA capabilities. If so then it’s one for support to answer. Saying that not sure what the benefit would be with the Hegel resampling again anyway.
First example works as the decoded file res is supported, 2nd isn’t so it must be Roons or Hegels logic that it gives no benefits to go to 96 then downsample to 88.1 then let Hegel again upsample to its playback rate. it’s one less processing step and filtering I guess.
Hi Evan,
When I enable Roon’s MQA decoder, the signal path shows mw that the MQA signal is being preserved and sent to my non-MQA DAC. I’m not sure you are getting the MQA first decode. I certainly could be mistaken!
