In grouped zones, Topping E50 loses the full MQA decoder function and becomes a renderer.
Is it normal?
I suspect it’s just a reporting “feature” when zones are grouped.
Can you post couple of screen shots of Roon Signal Path:
- Not Grouped
- Grouped
Yes, it’s a reporting feature when grouped. Why?
Are you able to post the screenshots, these will help Roon’s support team to be able to offer the best advice?
Extremely likely to be normal.
Provide the screen shot of signal path as required.
Also state the MQA Capabilities setting for every device in the group.
In most cases you need them to run in renderer mode for grouped MQA playback anyway, unless any one of them does not play as renderer as a result of old firmware or firmware bug.
If one of the zones you are grouping have any kind of DSP (PEQ, Crossfeed, speaker setup) or volume leveling, then all the other zones will play MQA as renderers and ORFS will show up in the signal patch.
It seems right, but is there a proper reason for this?
When grouped, with another Zone, it seems the MQA capable DAC get the renderer treatment from Roon.
Here it plays as a single Zone, MQA Decode and Render works as intended.
And when grouped with a non MQA-compliant endpoint:
I’m just curious if this is a Roon behaviour or something other software/hardware handles differently?
Edit: If i turn off “Roon MQA Core Decoder” for the non-MQA device the Topping does the full Decode, and the other DAC gets served unprocessed material:
