Roon & MQA - Software Decoding Is Coming!

[miguelito]

The MQA version, either through careful remastering or whatever (I don't care) is miles better. Fabulous.

Just compared Blue in these versions: 24/192 (HDTracks), 16/44 (Tidal), MQA (Tidal) on Roon. So NO MQA decoding. The MQA version is still much better. No comparison. Joni's voice is present and unveiled compared to the other two versions.

 

 

To be more precise: playback chain is

 

Roon>HQPlayer>NAA>microRendu>EmmLabs DAC

 

and HQP is upsampling to power of 2 PCM.

[jtwrace]

Just compared Blue in these versions: 24/192 (HDTracks), 16/44 (Tidal), MQA (Tidal) on Roon. So NO MQA decoding. The MQA version is still much better. No comparison. Joni's voice is present and unveiled compared to the other two versions.

 

 

To be more precise: playback chain is

 

Roon>HQPlayer>NAA>microRendu>EmmLabs DAC

 

and HQP is upsampling to power of 2 PCM.

 

So it's a better mastered version. Sure would be interesting to see the data on all of them.

[miguelito]

So it's a better mastered version. Sure would be interesting to see the data on all of them.

Exactly. But like I said before, if MQA means better mastered versions regardless of the technology, Bob Stuart gets my dollah.

[jtwrace]

Exactly. But like I said before, if MQA means better mastered versions regardless of the technology, Bob Stuart gets my dollah.

 

That makes sense but they're remastering everything they post? I bet Tidal will charge (eventually) if the Masters catalog grows to a big amount. They have to get their ROI somehow.

[fritzg]

PLUS... The Dragonfly Red & Black are supposed to get a fw upgrade to make them decode MQA. The Red is a DAC I can strongly recommend.

The Black is also very good, and has an analog volume control.

[miguelito]

That makes sense but they're remastering everything they post? I bet Tidal will charge (eventually) if the Masters catalog grows to a big amount. They have to get their ROI somehow.

I have no idea who bears the cost of this. Additionally, I would not bother to remaster everything, just the classics so that people say "it sounds so good!"

[miguelito]

The Black is also very good, and has an analog volume control.

But lower output voltage. So it will not drive higher impedance cans very authoritatively...

[jtwrace]

I have no idea who bears the cost of this.

 

I do, I do. The customer!

[Rexp]

Just compared Blue in these versions: 24/192 (HDTracks), 16/44 (Tidal), MQA (Tidal) on Roon. So NO MQA decoding. The MQA version is still much better. No comparison. Joni's voice is present and unveiled compared to the other two versions.

 

 

To be more precise: playback chain is

 

Roon>HQPlayer>NAA>microRendu>EmmLabs DAC

 

and HQP is upsampling to power of 2 PCM.

Fantastic news! Would be interested to know if HQPlayer/upsampling is now needed in your view?

[GUTB]

Lol I went ahead and bought a Dragonfly Red...man you guys are making me spend a lot of $. I'll compare with the Miridian DAC.

 

 

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[jtwrace]

Lol I went ahead and bought a Dragonfly Red...man you guys are making me spend a lot of $. I'll compare with the Miridian DAC.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Computer Audiophile

 

Good job!

 

+1 point.

[miguelito]

Fantastic news! Would be interested to know if HQPlayer/upsampling is now needed in your view?

I presume your question is whether decoded MQA benefits from HQP upsampling. Hard to say at the moment b/c we cannot decode MQA in Roon.

[Rexp]

I presume your question is whether decoded MQA benefits from HQP upsampling. Hard to say at the moment b/c we cannot decode MQA in Roon.

No, I meant with no MQA decoding, given the better master. Have you compared with and without HQP?

[miguelito]

No, I meant with no MQA decoding, given the better master. Have you compared with and without HQP?

Ah ok. Have not tried.

[jtwrace]

Ah ok. Have not tried.

 

Uh, get to it!

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I've been reading this thread with interest. Overall I feel positive about MQA. If the DRM aspect is encouraging record labels to release superior sounding re-mastered albums in High-Rez, that can only be a good thing.

 

The Sound Galleries Music Server (SGM) will of course be able to take MQA decoded by Roon through HQPlayer for up-sampling in PCM or up sampling and conversion to DSD. Alternatively it will take the roon decoded MQA and pass it directly to an MQA DAC, so the famous 'blue light' comes on.

 

It's the customer's choice

 

Geoff

[mansr]

I've been reading this thread with interest. Overall I feel positive about MQA. If the DRM aspect is encouraging record labels to release superior sounding re-mastered albums in High-Rez, that can only be a good thing.

 

MQA is not high-res. It is in fact slightly inferior to CD quality.

[barrows]

I've been reading this thread with interest. Overall I feel positive about MQA. If the DRM aspect is encouraging record labels to release superior sounding re-mastered albums in High-Rez, that can only be a good thing.

 

The Sound Galleries Music Server (SGM) will of course be able to take MQA decoded by Roon through HQPlayer for up-sampling in PCM or up sampling and conversion to DSD. Alternatively it will take the roon decoded MQA and pass it directly to an MQA DAC, so the famous 'blue light' comes on.

 

It's the customer's choice

 

Geoff

 

Right: it is the customer's choice now. But what if a record company decides to release in MQA instead of release in straight, hi resolution? Then it is no longer the customers choice, we are being forced (if it is music we want in the first place) to buy what is really a sort of faux hi res, instead of the real thing. And not only that, we are being lied to by being told it is "Master Quality", when the actual master quality is the not MQAed hi resolution file. This is what I am afraid if if MQA really gains widespread acceptance.

Be sure to check out the thread posted by mansr, which shows actual spectral analysis, there are problems there.

[jstrouth]

I've been long awaiting a solution to use both ROON and MQA on my MSB Dac V with network renderer.

 

Roon decoding sounds like a good partial solution - since MSB are at this time implementing MQA decoding only through quad-USB input.

 

But this doesn't help with ROON, since MSB won't read the RAAT standard. Hoping for MSB to go RoonReady, but don't know when/if...

 

I really like the network renderer, and don't really want to have to go USB unless I have to......

 

Do I have any worthwhile options??

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Right: it is the customer's choice now. But what if a record company decides to release in MQA instead of release in straight, hi resolution? Then it is no longer the customers choice, we are being forced (if it is music we want in the first place) to buy what is really a sort of faux hi res, instead of the real thing. And not only that, we are being lied to by being told it is "Master Quality", when the actual master quality is the not MQAed hi resolution file. This is what I am afraid if if MQA really gains widespread acceptance.

Be sure to check out the thread posted by mansr, which shows actual spectral analysis, there are problems there.

 

To be clear; when I said "it's the customer's choice" I was purely referring to the options we offer with the SGM when it comes to MQA material. NOT, the choices between MQA and non-MQA.

 

I agree with mansr you and others that MQA is a compromise and I'm not here to defend that. I see MQA as mainly positive though, because it appears to be encouraging the the release of material previously unavailable in High Rez. I could be wrong about that; but I see albums I don't recall seeing in High-rez before and that's just a few days of "Master" releases on Tidal.

 

I don't doubt that a non-MQA high-rez release is likely to sound better, especially when passed through HQPlayer for up sampling and possibly conversion to DSD.

 

I'm hoping that even if MQA is successful, non MQA will continue to coincide with MQA for a long time to come. Music formats have a habit of hanging around!

 

I'm also hoping that MQA will lift the quality enjoyed by normal non-audiophile people, way above what they are used to, and even get some of them interested in seeking out the better audio products.

[miguelito]

Roon decoding sounds like a good partial solution - since MSB are at this time implementing MQA decoding only through quad-USB input.

It's actually a good question. My expectation is that the core would decode into a PCM stream to be sent to the endpoint over RAAT. But I'm not sure about that.

 

 

 

When I play a file format (say DSD64) that the endpoint does not support, where does the DSD->PCM conversion happen?

[jtwrace]

I have the Micro iDSD and will have the DragonFly Red tomorrow so will be able to compare soon. Like you, I'll be interested to hear its MQA capabilities after the upcoming firmware update.

 

The Micro iDSD is very good (almost as good as my Geek Pulse), so the DragonFly will have some mighty big shoes to fill, but I'd been considering it anyway, to have a smaller travel DAC.

 

Any updates?

[miguelito]

It's actually a good question. My expectation is that the core would decode into a PCM stream to be sent to the endpoint over RAAT. But I'm not sure about that.

 

When I play a file format (say DSD64) that the endpoint does not support, where does the DSD->PCM conversion happen?

Answer to both from the Roon forum - and possibly all decoding/transcoding/upsampling done within Roon - is that it is all done in the Roon core and then sent over RAAT to the endpoint.

[fritzg]

I just talked to Bob Stuart for 45 minutes about how it works with software / hardware decode. I'll be writing something up as soon as I can.

Looking forward to hearing about this.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Yesterday I tried an experiment. Using the Tidal desktop app and AudioHijack pro on my Mac Air, I recorded Cary from Joni Mitchell's Blue album. This gave me a 96/24 software decoded file from the MQA "master" which I could then move to the SGM and play through HQPlayer. HQP upsampling and conversion to DSD512 was played through the Lampizator Der Seibener DAC.

 

I liked the result! The source for this was probably the 96/24 I already brought from Qobuz; but I don't know. Anyway I preferred the MQA version when I compared the two through HQP.

 

Whether it's the re-master or MQA or both, who knows? For me it's academic because Tidal has made these "masters" available in this format.

 

This is the way I hope it works in roon, in that Roon would software decode then the result of that can be sent through HQP. This allowed me to hear how this will sound manually (leaving aside any other influence from roon on the sound).

 

It has been requested that roon has a configuration panel for MQA and I think this makes perfect sense.

 

When MQA is the source, some may prefer sending straight to their MQA dac for full decoding there, or to do software decoding in roon and then send out via their chosen audio output, such as HQPlayer.

 

I hope this is how it will work.

 

 

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