You do not lose with undecoded MQA. It is backwards compatible and you benefit from the studio de blurring.
This is one of the major advantages of MQA ensuring everyone wins. You don’t have to buy any new equipment to benefit.
Now if we forget some theory and use our ears, we will find this to be true.
Just enjoyed Warren Zevon, werewolf of London undecoded via my Meridian system MS200 and have never heard it so clear and engaging. Also Lou Reed Sweet Jane. It positively sparkles. Try it.
I’m afraid that this isn’t true. I have (completely legitimate) 16/44.1 MQA files from two sources.
Edit: Here’s one of them: https://www.onkyomusic.com/GB/releases/5038939
And Roon itself says that the file is 16/44.1:
The other is test material from MQA… 
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Well that isn’t helping solve the Tidal confusion in this thread now is it?
The definitive answer is, subscribe to Tidal Hi Fi. Subscribe to Roon. Get the latest version on Core and remote. Go to Tidal within Roon, then What’s New and you will see Masters. Select Masters and View All.
That’s it folks… 
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If you want it to play back at 24/96 you’ll need to use the Tidal desktop program which is directly connected to your DAC. The Tidal desktop app does an additional “unfold” and some software decoding (to a certain degree, mind you it’s not full MQA decoded). If you play it back using Roon, currently you should get 24/48 for the majority of Masters until, as they’ve stated in the provided link above, incorporated some level of software decoding into Roon.
Now what would be really cool is if Roon were to create a Masters section of their own based on the current Google Docs Spreadsheet that has approximately 2,400 Albums in it. It’s clear that Tidal is just going to highlight a sampling of those titles and provide a list of a hundred or thereabouts. I suppose someone could create a massive playlist of all these MQA Masters also
The more people that give feedback to Tidal regarding the way that MQA / Masters are presented & accessible, the more inclined they might be to improve things !
Roon have already stated there’s not a lot they can (currently) do from their end…
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Thanks for the link.
I run Tidal and Roon on a Dell Tablet, running Windows 10. I have a Meridian Explorer 2 dac connected to the USB on the tablet. When running Roon, providing: I select the Meridian zone that uses the ASIO driver as the output zone; set the volume control mode to ‘Fixed Volume’ and ; set DSP Engine to ‘Disabled’, Roon passes the MQA files through at full resolution to the Meridian DAC, illuminating the lights on the dac in exactly the same way as if I was playing the files from the Tidal desktop. However, if I look at the signal path in Tidal of the track being played it does still show the source as being 48khz 24bit. You can hear that it’s playing in hi res though and the lights on the dac indicate that it’s playing in hi res.
Your Explorer is unfolding the MQA file. Roon doesn’t know this, it is just passing the folded file through.
Yes, I was confirming that Roon does do this pass-through as I’ve read several posts on the web where they say it doesn’t. At least I can then use my mobile phone to control playback, whereas if I used Tidal desktop, I would have to do it all from the tablet, which is on my hi-fi stand, wired up to the hi-fi.
Ronnie, I see you’ve withdrawn your post, but if you still want to know, yes, when I installed the driver(s) on Windows 10 for the Explorer 2 dac, Roon then sees the Explorer as 2 devices, one being the ASIO device. This is the one that works for me.
Thanks Gary
I withdrew it because I can see the Edited version of your post said Dell Tablet was Windows 10 based…whereas without that additional comment, most would assume it was Android based
And ASIO on Android wasn’t making sense to me…hence my question
All cleared up, now that I know it’s a Windows 10 Tablet
Cheers