Why can't Roon both decode and render MQA?

I rest my case, your honor.

Sure - you can argue by agreement - “hey a couple of people share my opinion! - it must be the truth!” :joy:

Of course not - just because some people decided to go streaking with the emperor, it doesn’t mean the emperor is not naked…

However, SQ is subjective and personal according to biases, beliefs, age, conditions of hearing, etc. Debatable, but I am not even arguing that… for now… They are using beliefs, biases, overconfidence on fallible human senses, and everything else that afflicts audiophiles to strip away your consumer rights. That is wrong.

v

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I never said that MQA sounds bad it’s just that it sounds no better than high resolution FLAC. No MQA DAC needed.

However I don’t agree with you statement that the record companies did any work whatsoever in preparing the MQA releases. Why do I believe this? Past behavior on the part of the record companies. I’m more than old enough to remember all the work that the record companies did NOT put into their initial CD release. they grabbed any old “master” and produced tons and tons and tons of really terrible sounding CDs. So now in the middle of what can only be called a paradigm shift in the recorded and live music business, a shift which is leading to vastly reduced revenues, these record companies are going to spend money they don’t have to do all the work required to generate worthwhile MQA releases for a streaming service with 1% market share? I may have been born in the morning just not this morning.

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Past behaviour has no effect on the current behaviour vis-à-vis MQA. This is pure assumption on your part and has no basis in fact or knowledge.

You are right past behavior has no effect on current behavior but money does. And my assumption is based on knowledge, knowledge of human behavior with respect to money and greed. The record companies will only act in a way that benefits their bottom line and spending time and money to carefully re-encode all their digital releases with MQA for a handful audiophiles does not benefit their bottom line.

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A different way of looking at the assertion that MQA is hardware dependent is to see the process as a two way communication between the MQA file and the MQA DAC. Looking at the process this way reveals what, as @evand says above, a complete farce MQA is. For there to be two way communication that was dependent on a specific DAC rather all DACs, it would mean that MQA file possesses the specific information needed for that specific MQA DAC. Therefore once a new DAC becomes MQA worthy all the MQA encoded files would need to have that new information added to them. Fancy wording with lots of techo babble does not make it so.

I think I will offer a special USB cable that when inserted between the music streamer and the DAC enables full MQA decoding. Now I just have to come up the right techo babble to make some audiophiles buy the cable. I don’t think that will be all that difficult given the current lack of critical thinking in the audiophile world.

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Ralph, I certainly hope that your USB cable does not interfere with the product I intend to introduce in about 4 weeks, my Iron Balls.

When you consider the simple electron, it’s painfully obvious that this sub-atomic particle is essentially a mindless automaton, guided in its wanderings by magnetic force lines. And these magnetic force lines are generated by the continuous flow of molten impure iron in the outer core of the earth. As it turns out, some years ago the elemental iron mined from a particular site in Outer Mongolia was found to be quantum-entangled with this molten iron deep below the earth’s crust, iron in constant movement to generate the Earth’s near-miraculous magnetic field which shields us from so many of nature’s harsh realities in the form of ionic particles showering upon this world from the vast nuclear furnace we call “the Sun”.

And, of course, our transmission of audio signals, both ANALOG AND DIGITAL, are also affected by these magnetic lines, a fact readily acknowledged by any with a minimal scientific education. Since the molten core of the Earth is not readily accessible, there’s little an audiophile can do about the magnetic field generated thereby.

Until now, that is.

My Iron Balls are machined from ore taken from that singular Mongolian quarry.* Due to the quantum entanglement, appropriately positioning these Balls around your stereo equipment** may produce startling improvements in SQ, particularly if you use enough of the Balls to effect a significant change. To assist in their positioning, I will also be offering a handheld precision measurement analyzer, for a low introductory price of $2995, which assists in assessing the efficacy of a particular arrangement, for those who aren’t confident of their innate abilities to assess this.

Naturally, the difficulties in procuring this ore, and the cost of precision machining, will mean that the price of even one Ball will be out of the reach of the mere hobbyist and Spotify user. But true audiophiles will immediately perceive the value of taking out a second mortgage to secure a sufficient quantity for their listening zones.

More when we are closer to launch!

[* Note that some Balls may be made from local materials.]

[** Use of the Balls in such a way as to cause falls, trips, or comical mishaps of any sort that result in damage to persons, pets, or property is strictly forbidden by the EULA. The Company cannot be responsible for any use of the Balls in violation of the EULA.]

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@Bill_Janssen I think that you’re about a month early. In about a month I’m looking forward to several very important new product announcements. I may even have one of two of my own announcements.

MQA is an invention, designed to make manufacturers and MQA money.
Why would they allow Roon to decode and render past the first unfold without collecting their royalty.

IMO, Flac in most instances sounds better.
MQA does not improve sound quality.

The quicker Spotify comes to market, the quicker consumers can dump Tidal MQA and return to lossless, the way the artist intended. :wink:

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Why wait for Spotify? Qobuz is already available with hi res flacs.

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Yeah, based on the fact that Roon doesn’t even have Amazon Music as of yet, I doubt they will have Spotify any time soon.

The hardware dependence of MQA is that MQA rendering produces different interim digital output (before feeding the DAC) for different DAC hardware for the same MQA file, such that the analog output achieves certain characteristics that MQA considers desirable. It is different because it is optimized for the individual hardware.

It does not require two way communication.

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:joy: :joy: :joy:
MQA is delivered in a Flac wrapper and sounds much better than standard CD files in a similar Flac wrapper, to my ears.

I’m talking about standard 44.1 flac. Which hasn’t been mangled by MQA processing, and bit stealing.

You do like your MQA… :grinning:
But… There’s always two sides to a coin.

I just don’t like MQA. Never will.

IMO, It’s a useless standard.
That serves a few, and does nothing for sound quality.

The way you said Never Will, tells me all I need to know. You are not listening and your mind 9s closed. That’s OK, but it means the debate is over.
I listen to plenty of CD quality Music as that’s what is out there, I listen to MQA by choice as the more I listen the more I realise what is wrong with CD in an experiential way. As I type, I am enjoying The Staves new album in 44/24 MQA Studio. Which kinda shows, going forward, really high res (in digital terms) music is dead.

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I understand you like MQA very much.
That’s cool. I don’t. In nearly all instances I prefer the sound of the unmangled flac track.

I’m not closed minded, Ive done plenty of testing in my system. I still listen to MQA if I don’t have an alternative, but it’s not my preference.

I live in Australia so Qobuz is not an option.
But Spotify lossless changes that.

I’m sorry, but for me and many others MQA doesn’t sound better. In most circumstances it’s over hyped and it doesn’t sound correct.

No point really discussing further.

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Flac is merely a container which can hold different formats. So it really does not matter if something is wrapped in a flac or not.

MQA is lossy. In other words, information is thrown away from the original source material. Once lost, no clever algorithm can bring that information back. MQA is no exception to that rule. It can be objectively measured that the MQA result is different from the original source.

CD format and high res formats (other than MQA) are lossles which means that no information is lost. This can also be objectively measured and in this case the result is identical to the original source.

You can claim MQA sounds better all you want and probably, in your subjective ears, it does, but objectively speaking there is no basis for such a claim. I could claim that MP3 files sound better, but there would also be no objective basis for that.

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You try and introductory offer of a ball costing 1 Triganic PU

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I’ve found some sound really good and some don’t. I’ve also found most sound as good or better played back with hqplayer filters applied @DSD256 rates.

But Bob says MQA is what the song was supposed to sound like.

Well mqa vs mqa is not all apples to apples. Tidal has several albums where the 96k file is studio and the 192 is not. Why bother having the 192 file if the 96 is the studio version that clearly sounds different. I thought all mqa was supposed to level the playing field… :thinking: And then they add all the 16/44 and 24/44 stuff. Same thing. Some of the listings have 16 and 24 for the same album but 24 is not always but usually studio. So why waste the space for the 16/44. It’s not like the 24 bit one won’t play back correctly. I don’t think I’ve found a 16/44 that is studio yet.

Idk. It’s annoying. Being able to unfold in Roon and upsample everything to DSD in hqplayer has given me one less thing to worry about. Now I just go all mad picking filters! :crazy_face:

True, but this recording’s final playback is MQA48. His picture shows 48khz 24 2ch MQA 48khz.

Even if the unfold is 24/96, this particular file is a 48 kHz final sampling rate. it also isn’t studio so it’s sub par anyways.

MQA tags in the metadata 3 things and I think they are there only as a reference as I have found most will still playback and authenticate without these. I believe Roon looks for the originalsamplerate to display the correct final MQA value.

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