Hello. Since Tidal announced they are discontinuing MQA it has been a long, slow process to replace MQA with FLAC.I understand it’s not an overnight process and they are dependent on labels and creators to submit replacements. Anyway…
I haven’t been able to follow how roon is supposed to update my library as new FLAC versions replace MQA versions. It was my understanding that it would be automatic.
Yet of the 3434 Tidal albums in my library, 1150 or 33% are still MQA. I spot checked a few, and according to roon, the versions tab shows only MQA versions available on Tidal. But, many others show FLAC versions available. Aren’t these supposed to be automatically updated by roon?
So what’s the deal? I really don’t want to manually go through 1150 albums looking for FLAC replacements. Is roon updating these albums? Or is this how it is and will ever be? At least roon still decodes them. Does roon (and/or Tidal) still pay royalties to Lenbrook or whoever?
(I realize this is on Tidal for the most part, and I’m wondering if Block is even interested in keeping Tidal going at all.)
They are mostly/all actual MQA. I haven’t kept detailed records, but I can’t remember any that were mislabeled recently, but I think I recall seeing a couple in the past.
If you have set Roon on Tidal Max, MQA will not be replaced until/unless Tidal has a high resolution version. I still have 476 MQA out of 2143 Tidal albums.
Yes, I have set it to high from max. My question was whether roon support has confirmed that this will make roon replace mqa with flac if it finds a cd quality replacement. Thanks.
Yes, you are right about the longevity of this process; it won’t be immediate, unfortunately.
I would like to point out that Roon does not save streaming services files offline, so you won’t have to manually redownload your library.
Roon keeps the details about TIDAL’s files in its own databases as well, and therefore the extensions will be changed accordingly to TIDAL’s updates.
However, during the period of transition from MQA to FLAC you might spot some file extension inconsistencies ( i. e. file is depicted as MQA but during the playback it will appear as FLAC).
Anyway, there are no actions required from your side, everything will be updated automatically and after the transition period everything will display properly.
Alternatively, when visiting your Tidal playlists, you can see the “Improve” button next to the album’s picture, and if you click it, it will show you if there are any quality upgrades/changes available; this might help you to keep track of this.
P.S. As per Tidal’s claim there still will be few tracks that will be converted to FLAC from MQA and your DAC might percieve those files as MQA even after transition.
Let us know please should you have more questions.