My system chain is:
Bluesound Node 2 (the newest version) connected to my Hegel H590 via Coax. My question has to do with MqA rendering: Only the USB input on the Hegel is supposed to do MqA, but when I look at the signal path in Roon is says it’s getting the full MqA decoder treatment, then hitting the digital/analog output (see attached).
I’m really confused about what’s going on (I’m new to all of this). If the DAC in my Hegel is only supposed to do MqA via the USB input, does that mean all of this decoding/unfolding is happening in Roon and then hits my Hegel at the full resolution (eg. 24 bit 96 kHz) and doesn’t have to do anything MqA related?
This is because the Bluesound Node 2 has full MQA decode capabilities built into it, Roon is not processing as a first unfold decode in this case. As I don’t use MQA much, I am not sure how the 590 would take an optical or coax digital signal from the Node to the 590, but assume it would keep the MQA stream intact.
Roon has no idea about the USB output of the Node as this is something they added after Roon certification it’s not currently properly supported. Roon is reporting the output path iit gets back via RAAT over the network from the analogue outs or spidf what your seeing is what is happening via that chain. The full decode is happening in the Bluesound. Roon is not given any info by the node if it’s connected via USB nor does it have any idea it’s using Spdif to another DAC as spdif is one way traffic and doesn’t communicate back.
You can’t send a full decode over usb to another dac though so if the mqa indicators are not working on your Hegel you have your Bluesound set up wrong to output to it.
