Will it ever be possible for Roon to do the total MQA unfold and rendering software in software?

No. Only hardware products are licensed to do this.

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What Ged said.

There is alway the possibility that MQA prosessing wil be reverse engineered.
We have seen this with a number of proprietary protocols.
If so, it can be a possibility to incorporate it in eg. RoPieee.
Nay sayers are not always right… we’ll see : )

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It’s a licensed product, roon wouldn’t allow anyone to use their product to knowingly break the law. So anything that became an illegal endpoint would, I’m sure, be blocked by Roon.

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Good point.
We’ll see…

MQA as a law? Isn’t it narcissism and pathological grandiosity…
It’s just playing music :wink:

I have no idea what you are talking about.

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What Ged said - again :laughing:

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MQA’s final stage is about the behaviour of the reconstruction filter of the specific D/A converter.
The reverse engineered software would have to know, which (sometimes selectable) filter is used and do the processing needed to mimic MQA’s intended response - sounds unlikely to happen to me…

But the specification is out there, so at one point it will leak, and we will have full software MQA decoders. And who knows - maybe MQA will be a success? A lot of proprietary technology have been released into the the public domain and got a new life.

No, is the simple answer no. Some study of the philosophy of MQA will explain a lot. But, it’s an end to end system that requires an MQA aware DAC to complete the process. There are so many MQA DACS coming to market at all price levels that the idea of hacking MQA is pointless along with being illegal.

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Then why are there MQA DACs with DAC chips that is not designed for MQA? I guess the final MQA decode may happen before the DAC chip or with “ordinary” instructions to the DAC chip.

Anyway, software can do any signal processing/filtering that chips can do. This is not about software limitations, but licensing and intellectual properties.

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Well yeah, hence the licensed part.

They make their income from licensing hardware, the artists do not pay them as far as I am aware.
There is no way around having an MQA aware DAC as MQA is an Analog to Analog system. Of course the DAC has software embedded within it. That’s how it works.

I know the business model, and it’s perfectly fine. I was just talking about what could happen in the future, and I thought you answered me and not OP - my bad, sorry for that.

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Just buy an MQA capable DAC. There are many available choices at every price point.

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Different MQA DAC applies different parameters of correction during MQA rendering of the same MQA music. This is why it is tied to DAC hardware. This is why it is hard, if not impossible, for a computer software to do full decoding, because you need the profiles for different DAC. The profiles are only obtained by sending a DAC hardware to MQA Ltd. as part of the MQA certification process, resulting in a MQA DAC for which a profile is created - so you don’t need the computer software to do the Full Decoding. There will not be profiles for DAC that have not gone through the process, without the profiles you can’t do the DAC-side correction for your non-MQA DAC.

Yes, manufacturers need to submit the DAC hardware to MQA Ltd. for this profiling.

MQA processing is not a static piece of software code. If one reverse engineers the MQA code from one product and somehow be able to put it into a different product with a different DAC chip, you’re not getting the MQA played in the way it’s meant to be.

Hypothetically if someone actually obtained all the IP of MQA Ltd., you still need a team to do the measurements, listening tests, and support for manufacturers to get this integrated in the way it’s meant to be, i.e. you need to replicate part of the MQA team with their knowledge, with their specific hardware to do DAC measurements, not just the MQA software.

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Thank you all
Now I understand more clearly why it’s unlikely

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There are plenty of threads on MQA… let’s talk about the real topic of interest here, which is @Marin_Weigel ‘s awesome avatar/username combo :joy:

Sorry, just had to give kudos to that…

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A post was split to a new topic: PiHAT with MQA support