Well, there are “tons” and then there are tons. Everything you said is what I am talking about - a viral “flash mob” like demand by those who slavishly follow a small number of publications and sources (e.g. Stereophile, TAD, and their webzine imitators), numbers that appear many at first but are in fact just a subset of an already small niche (i.e. those who follow trends and marketing in “High End”). As soon as real Hi Res was readily available, or for that matter the next (digital) fad driven by these same authorities whipping up the same mob, you and every other manufacturer will be chasing that small $slice$ of the market…maybe.
All the effort promoting and defending what is in reality a step backward in sound quality and poor effort to fleece the consumer…it is all so unnecessary in hindsight. No doubt the next must-have-checkbox will come along, but let’s hope there is actual substance to it for everyone - consumers, hardware/software providers such yourself and Roon. Perhaps next time you will take a breath, do a little due diligence, etc. You can’t put the internet genie back in the bottle, and consumers won’t be quite so gullible when writers at Stereophile et al, who in fact don’t know a bit from a byte, let alone how digital audio actually works, declares fill_in_the_blank the next BIG THING.
I’m about to try a new Topping D90SE (with MQA) and throw in an A90 HPA just for fun with some good cans to keep the room out of the equation, seeing as I also have the matching Pre90 and EXT90 units making a nice compact stack I can AB with - other than my Lumin’s that do MQA in some fashion as its only the D1/D2 models ill be able to compare things with several other non MQA DAC’s from OPPO, OKTO, Emotiva and Soekris
I’m guessing I might hear some differences but that’s keeping an open mind…time will tell.
SukieInTheGraveyard
(This one time, at Bandcamp... I spent too much money!)
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They did offer MQA and non-MQA of the D90, but not on the more recent D70s or D90SE. Neither do they offer it on the newly released EX5 (HPA/DAC).
Offering 2 versions of the same DAC seems to have been phased out by Topping. They did release the D30 Pro as non-MQA DAC earlier this year, so they haven’t completely given up on all things non-MQA. The D10s, D50s and E30 are also all still available (non-MQA).
Going to finish now as I’ve started to bore even myself!!!
I dont understand all the complaining about Roon supporting MQA in a single product rather than making it a paid extra.
Do you all complain about features/formats/codecs that your AVR (or other gear) has that you dont use? Especially considering many of them most likely required a considerable licence fee to be included in the cost of the product? I should think there is licensed tech contributing to the cost of many things that we buy and and dont use for whatever reason.
The thing you have to also consider is that maintaining multiple product variations with/without various extra costs options is in itself a considerable ongoing operating cost - this is true even for software - , increase in code paths, in test matrix, support complexity etc… I don’t know how much MQA costs per use but I do know full well the dev, test and support and marketting complexity that often goes with extra paid for features, especially when you start to add apple store etc into the equation. Then also add that without significant added value of the extra paid for features, then it can be a turn off to consumers for all skews of the product, not just premium skews.
I would really think Roon would hugely struggle with making MQA a paid extra especially as it would be against the market norm. To be worthwhile it would have to be a considerable extra cost. Then when one looks at that extra cost it is likely this will be perceived as a bit extreme in the market context just to add MQA, so they may feel compelled to make a bunch of other features ‘premium’. Most likely many of us would end up buying the premium version anyway and so still end up with MQA even if you were one of the group who actively did not want it.
I should be is just easier and cheaper for all concerned to simply not use it if you dont want to.