Roon & MQA - Software Decoding Is Coming!

[sdolezalek]

I've been listening to Master quality files in the desktop Tidal app on my Mac and hear a vast, obvious difference between HiFI and MQA versions streamed to my (non-MQA-decoding) Ayre Codex. The MQA sound is less typically digital and far more realistic than the HIFI versions of the same track. For the first time in my system, streamed music sounds as good as—and in some cases better than—lossless files from local storage. And this is available to Tidal subscribers at no cost.

 

What puzzles me is the sour tone of many posts on this thread. From the beginning, lots of otherwise smart people seem convinced that MQA is out to trick or deceive them. (It's true that this reaction has been egged on by some of Meridian's competitors who have a business incentive in seeing MQA fail, but have muddied this fact by letting drop all kinds of theoretical reasons for why it can't possibly work.) Some people don't need to listen to MQA—they just know that it's some kind of Ponzi scheme. But then there are people who just know that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria. Sigh.

 

I think the next 6-12 months will be a very interesting time. Things to think about:

 

1. It appears that the software decoding in Tidal, Audirvana and Roon (to come) unpacks the 24/48 file in Tidal to a 24/88 or 24/96 higher res file, but that the hardware decoders are capable of further unpacking to a 24/386 level; therefore reasons will remain for us to buy MQA'd hardware.

 

2. I think we will discover that there is a broad range of how much a piece benefits from MQA. New music recorded from the start with MQA will sound by far the best. Older files carefully remastered in MQA will sound better. Older files remastered with less care may or may not sound better.

 

3. My guess is that the volume of titles released in MQA has surprised many, if not most, hardware manufacturers. the result will be that many who passed on licensing MQA will now rapidly reconsider whether their product needs MQA capabilities to compete.

 

4. Because MQA represents change, there will continue to be lots of detractors/doubters, particularly regarding the "DRM" issues, but because the biggest benefit from MQA is to streaming, people will adopt it far more quickly than other new formats because they don't have to reacquire content they already own -- they just keep subscribing to Tidal and automatically get the new content (today at no additional cost).

 

5. For those of us who love HQPlayer and Jussi's great filters, the decisions may be more difficult because we will be forced to choose between MQA's filters and the additional processing load those filters and the unpacking puts on the DAC and the benefits of doing that in software that HQPlayer provides (but without the benefit of the final unfolding that MQA has restricted to its hardware licensees).

[mink70]

From technical perspective it looks ugly. But it's like with MP3 or anything else, if someone likes the sound, it's all fine.

I just like to keep objective and subjective views separate.

 

But Jussi, you're comparing MQA to MP3—the latter being an obviously bad-sounding, heavily compressed format. Are you saying properly decoded MQA sounds bad to you? And what does "looks ugly" mean? Are you implying it's dishonest, or sounds bad?

[mink70]

For me, it's based on principle. I won't support any business supporting DRM. Plain and simple.

 

To call MQA a DRM system is just plain wrong. This has been explained many times, but people continue to promote this view. I honestly don't know why. Even the licensing fees that MQA charges industry partners are entirely fair—why should they be expected to give away their technology for free?

[Miska]

But Jussi, you're comparing MQA it to MP3—which is a clearly bad-sounding, compressed format. Are you saying properly decoded MQA sounds bad to you? And what does "looks ugly" mean? Are you implying it's dishonest, or sounds bad?

 

Both are comparable in a way that they modify the content. They make assumptions about the content and take things out to make it fit the the available bandwidth.

 

I'm not saying it's dishonest. I'm just saying you put A into MQA encoder and at the output C comes out (even when decoded with MQA decoder). While if you put A into FLAC or ALAC encoder A comes out of decoder. Just purely objective view. If I take two versions of the same track, the MQA one and the original hires one, the output of the two is different. So far what I've been looking MQA cuts out high frequencies, some of the hires from the hires.

 

"Sounds" is subjective. To me, the original hires FLAC upsampled to DAC's highest sampling rate (usually DSD) sounds best. And what I've measured also measures best.

 

How something sounds to you depends on your hearing preferences/emphasis and on your system.

[mink70]

I think the next 6-12 months will be a very interesting time. Things to think about:

 

1. It appears that the software decoding in Tidal, Audirvana and Roon (to come) unpacks the 24/48 file in Tidal to a 24/88 or 24/96 higher res file, but that the hardware decoders are capable of further unpacking to a 24/386 level; therefore reasons will remain for us to buy MQA'd hardware.

 

2. I think we will discover that there is a broad range of how much a piece benefits from MQA. New music recorded from the start with MQA will sound by far the best. Older files carefully remastered in MQA will sound better. Older files remastered with less care may or may not sound better.

 

3. My guess is that the volume of titles released in MQA has surprised many, if not most, hardware manufacturers. the result will be that many who passed on licensing MQA will now rapidly reconsider whether their product needs MQA capabilities to compete.

 

4. Because MQA represents change, there will continue to be lots of detractors/doubters, particularly regarding the "DRM" issues, but because the biggest benefit from MQA is to streaming, people will adopt it far more quickly than other new formats because they don't have to reacquire content they already own -- they just keep subscribing to Tidal and automatically get the new content (today at no additional cost).

 

5. For those of us who love HQPlayer and Jussi's great filters, the decisions may be more difficult because we will be forced to choose between MQA's filters and the additional processing load those filters and the unpacking puts on the DAC and the benefits of doing that in software that HQPlayer provides (but without the benefit of the final unfolding that MQA has restricted to its hardware licensees).

 

I agree completely. I'm a fan of Jussi's superb filters, too, but believe that it's great to have alternatives. There's plenty of room for different approaches. And why shouldn't we applaud a technology that's clearly a breakthrough in digital playback?

[mink70]

Both are comparable in a way that they modify the content. They make assumptions about the content and take things out to make it fit the the available bandwidth.

 

I'm not saying it's dishonest. I'm just saying you put A into MQA encoder and at the output C comes out (even when decoded with MQA decoder). While if you put A into FLAC or ALAC encoder A comes out of decoder. Just purely objective view. If I take two versions of the same track, the MQA one and the original hires one, the output of the two is different. So far what I've been looking MQA cuts out high frequencies, some of the hires from the hires.

 

"Sounds" is subjective. To me, the original hires FLAC upsampled to DAC's highest sampling rate (usually DSD) sounds best. And what I've measured also measures best.

How something sounds to you depends on your hearing preferences/emphasis and on your system.

Yes, your point about the not-entirely-lossless aspects of MQA encoding is fair. But what audiophiles do is listen to music, and the sound of MQA, even partly decoded, is quite terrific. Also, I think your claim that "how something sounds to you depends on your hearing preferences/emphasis and on your system" is overstated, given the present forum. I don't think anyone reading this would prefer the sound of highly-compressed MP3 over good DSD, no matter their system/preferences/emphasis. I think the popularity of your software is proof of this.

 

Aside from this, though, repeatedly disparaging a business competitor in a public forum is just bad form. It undermines the trust we have in this community and in your motives.

[Miska]

But what audiophiles do is listen to music, and the sound of MQA, even partly decoded, is quite terrific.

 

Not to me, on the only only MQA-decoder I have which is in the Meridian DAC. On that DAC, the original hires (96/24) tracks played out upsampled to 192/24 it supports sound better than same tracks in MQA. And also objectively looking at the analog output spectrum also cleaner due to less images spreading throughout the spectrum.

 

Aside from this, though, repeatedly disparaging a business competitor in a public forum is just bad form. It undermines the trust we have in this community and in your motives.

 

On what shape or form do they compete with anything I do? They make codec, I make a player. I don't even support Tidal as such. But I'm an audiophile too and care about quality in first place. And I want my stuff to be playable on Linux - my primary OS platform of choice.

 

Of course I could stop selling HQPlayer and just keep making it for myself just like before I was selling it. Then I would have much more free time to listen music.

[mink70]

On what shape or form do they compete with anything I do? They make codec, I make a player. I don't even support Tidal as such. But I'm an audiophile too and care about quality in first place. And I want my stuff to be playable on Linux - my primary OS platform of choice.

 

Come on, Jussi. Their codec is being adopted by Roon and Audirvana+. Are these not your competitors?

Of course I could stop selling HQPlayer and just keep making it for myself just like before I was selling it. Then I would have much more free time to listen music.

 

Are you suggesting that you sell your (not-inexpensive) software as an act of public service?

[Miska]

Come on, Jussi. Their codec is being adopted by Roon and Audirvana+. Are these not your competitors?

 

Well, with Roon it's complicated because I certainly co-operate with them. Audirvana+ is kind of competitor, but only on macOS. However, I have not said anything about either player and their support about MQA. If you look my past posts and blog posts here, I've been saying the same about MQA long time before there was any hint of Roon or Audirvana going to have any kind of decoding support.

 

Are you suggesting that you sell your (not-inexpensive) software as an act of public service?

 

It is very inexpensive, and for that reason I'm not making my living out of it. I'm selling it to cover the costs of selling it. Of course if I would ask typical high-end price of at least 5000€ then it would be different.

 

I believe it's the same for Audirvana too. I don't know, but I believe it's not Damien's day job.

[barrows]

Come on, Jussi. Their codec is being adopted by Roon and Audirvana+. Are these not your competitors?

 

 

Are you suggesting that you sell your (not-inexpensive) software as an act of public service?

 

I think that you are being a bit unfair. Jussi has been a very valuable contributor to these forums, often patiently explaining technical issues to forum members on his own time. Here he has pointed out that MQA is like MP3, in that it makes a subjective evaluation about what matters for sound quality, and then applies that. This is starkly different to lossless compression like FLAC or ALAC. MQA is not pit perfect, and it also is taking the music consumer for a bit of a ride, I smell something bad with MQA. The phrase "Master Quality Authentication" is very, very mis-leading as well, as the MQA delivery has nothing to do with any master.

Jussi has looked at analysis of the MQA filters and seen the artifacts, these are not part of the original music, do you really want these in your playback?

It appears as though MQA is DRM, masquerading as sound quality improvement. But as audiophiles, we already have improved sound via lossless hi res files, and things like HQPlayer and other's filter algorithms, so who needs it?

[GUTB]

Okay I just got the Meridian Explorer 2. Installation went just fine, and unlike my other interfaces, Tidal picked it up just fine and recognized it as an MQA device:

 

 

 

Initial listening impression of the 2L Mozart Violin Concerto in D major, selected because I own the MQA remaster album so I can test it outside of Tidal. My chain:

 

Dedicated audio PC -> Jitterbug -> bundled USB cable -> Explorer 2 -> TH900 using a TRS-to-3.5mm cable. First, Explorer 2 has an awfully hot / up-gained output. Good news, the DAC immediately picks up the fact the stream is MQA with a blue status light, which according to the manual, means "MQA studio". The driver installed by the Meridian package is actually an ASIO device, which is good. Testing with JRiver, streaming the same track untouched also results in the blue status light, and quality of output identical to Tidal.

 

I'm completely unaccustomed to this DAC, but my immediate impression is that it sounds "hi res", ie, more dimension and texture, especially noticeable in the violin solos. Still, it lacks the microdetail and blackness of my reference chain, so differences attributed to being higher resolution may be thanks to MQA to varying degrees....if that makes sense, lol.

 

Next up, playing the track through HQPlayer:

 

 

HQPlayer filters out the MQA noise, resulting in a less compromised audio as compared to just streaming the MQA file raw into a non-MQA DAC. Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference -- bear in mind I'm still listening to the Explorer 2. The album was mastered in DXD, but I can't test that here because the Merdian only handles 192kHz maximum.

[Miska]

The album was mastered in DXD, but I can't test that here because the Merdian only handles 192kHz maximum.

 

You can still listen to the original DXD one with HQPlayer, it'll convert it to 192/24 with your filter of choice. That's what I did for comparison. For example try with poly-sinc-short.

[mink70]

Okay I just got the Meridian Explorer 2. Installation went just fine, and unlike my other interfaces, Tidal picked it up just fine and recognized it as an MQA device:

Did you check "MQA Passthrough" under the Tidal Sound Output settings?

[Miska]

Did you check "MQA Passthrough" under the Tidal Sound Output settings?

 

He did since he got the blue light on Explorer 2...

[mink70]

But as audiophiles, we already have improved sound via lossless hi res files, and things like HQPlayer and other's filter algorithms, so who needs it?

 

Personally, I really appreciate the ability to stream super-high-quality files without relying on a powerful PC, a hard drive, etc. Because with streaming the files are served from, you know, space.

 

Also, with the Tidal desktop app, compare a "pit-perfect" CD-quality HIFI stream with an MQA Master stream—of the same track. The improvement with MQA is so clear that it seem to be pretty obvious.

[mink70]

Okay I just got the Meridian Explorer 2. Installation went just fine, and unlike my other interfaces, Tidal picked it up just fine and recognized it as an MQA device:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32212[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32213[/ATTACH]

 

Initial listening impression of the 2L Mozart Violin Concerto in D major, selected because I own the MQA remaster album so I can test it outside of Tidal. My chain:

 

Dedicated audio PC -> Jitterbug -> bundled USB cable -> Explorer 2 -> TH900 using a TRS-to-3.5mm cable. First, Explorer 2 has an awfully hot / up-gained output. Good news, the DAC immediately picks up the fact the stream is MQA with a blue status light, which according to the manual, means "MQA studio". The driver installed by the Meridian package is actually an ASIO device, which is good. Testing with JRiver, streaming the same track untouched also results in the blue status light, and quality of output identical to Tidal.

 

I'm completely unaccustomed to this DAC, but my immediate impression is that it sounds "hi res", ie, more dimension and texture, especially noticeable in the violin solos. Still, it lacks the microdetail and blackness of my reference chain, so differences attributed to being higher resolution may be thanks to MQA to varying degrees....if that makes sense, lol.

 

Next up, playing the track through HQPlayer:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32214[/ATTACH]

 

HQPlayer filters out the MQA noise, resulting in a less compromised audio as compared to just streaming the MQA file raw into a non-MQA DAC. Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference -- bear in mind I'm still listening to the Explorer 2. The album was mastered in DXD, but I can't test that here because the Merdian only handles 192kHz maximum.

So are you comparing an MQA stream from the Tidal app vs. the same files served from local storage via HQPlayer?

[Miska]

Also, with the Tidal desktop app, compare a "pit-perfect" CD-quality HIFI stream with an MQA Master stream—of the same track. The improvement with MQA is so clear that it seem to be pretty obvious.

 

I'd rather stay with the CD-quality stream because it can sound much better than the current options for playing MQA version. What I certainly don't want is to be force-fed the MQA stream instead of CD-quality stream.

 

If they want to provide hires streaming, they should provide it as a standard non-MQA hires stream instead. I'm ready to pay for example 10€/month extra for it.

[KnockKnock]

Sorry if this has been covered...

 

When I use the Tidal App on my iMac, everything is fine, I can find the (MQA) "Masters" under "What´s New" and find all the new MQA albums.

But as I mostly (always actually) use ROON, I cannot find the (MQA) "Masters" under "TIDAL" -> "New" in Roon. What am I doing wrong? Where are these Masters listed in ROON?

 

best KnockKnock

[The Computer Audiophile]

Okay I just got the Meridian Explorer 2. Installation went just fine, and unlike my other interfaces, Tidal picked it up just fine and recognized it as an MQA device:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32212[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32213[/ATTACH]

 

Initial listening impression of the 2L Mozart Violin Concerto in D major, selected because I own the MQA remaster album so I can test it outside of Tidal. My chain:

 

Dedicated audio PC -> Jitterbug -> bundled USB cable -> Explorer 2 -> TH900 using a TRS-to-3.5mm cable. First, Explorer 2 has an awfully hot / up-gained output. Good news, the DAC immediately picks up the fact the stream is MQA with a blue status light, which according to the manual, means "MQA studio". The driver installed by the Meridian package is actually an ASIO device, which is good. Testing with JRiver, streaming the same track untouched also results in the blue status light, and quality of output identical to Tidal.

 

I'm completely unaccustomed to this DAC, but my immediate impression is that it sounds "hi res", ie, more dimension and texture, especially noticeable in the violin solos. Still, it lacks the microdetail and blackness of my reference chain, so differences attributed to being higher resolution may be thanks to MQA to varying degrees....if that makes sense, lol.

 

Next up, playing the track through HQPlayer:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32214[/ATTACH]

 

HQPlayer filters out the MQA noise, resulting in a less compromised audio as compared to just streaming the MQA file raw into a non-MQA DAC. Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference -- bear in mind I'm still listening to the Explorer 2. The album was mastered in DXD, but I can't test that here because the Merdian only handles 192kHz maximum.

 

The meridian interface may be limited to 192, but when decoded and rendered internally, it can play full DXD.

[Miska]

The meridian interface may be limited to 192, but when decoded and rendered internally, it can play full DXD.

 

At least the 2L material really seems to play or contain just 88.2k. I have not yet found anything that would seem to go past 96k.

[bobbmd]

Has anyone used an Audioquest DragonFly RED as your DAC with the TIDAL desktop app and does it or will it have MQA decoding-how is the SQ/bass/spacialization etc. I thought I would try it as an inexpensive way to a MQA decoding DAC- maybe Chris has some thought as he reviewed the AQ DF RED earlier. I assume if the DF decodes MQA one would use the 'passthrough' box in settings on TIDAL-correct?

[The Computer Audiophile]

At least the 2L material really seems to play or contain just 88.2k. I have not yet found anything that would seem to go past 96k.

 

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.

[comedus06]

I'd rather stay with the CD-quality stream because it can sound much better than the current options for playing MQA version. What I certainly don't want is to be force-fed the MQA stream instead of CD-quality stream.

 

If they want to provide hires streaming, they should provide it as a standard non-MQA hires stream instead. I'm ready to pay for example 10€/month extra for it.

 

I'm hoping that one of the competitors like Pandora or Spotify or in a dream scenario Apple music use this as a kick in the butt to introduce high res streaming without MQA (fine if they charge more) and make Tidal and Warner look like fools for having spent 1-2 years dealing with this MQA BS.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

[bogi]

Also, with the Tidal desktop app, compare a "pit-perfect" CD-quality HIFI stream with an MQA Master stream—of the same track. The improvement with MQA is so clear that it seem to be pretty obvious.

 

If the MQA version wants to be hires, then it would be fair to compare it with the corresponding hires version (which was used to encode to MQA) and not with the CD quality version.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Has anyone used an Audioquest DragonFly RED as your DAC with the TIDAL desktop app and does it or will it have MQA decoding-how is the SQ/bass/spacialization etc. I thought I would try it as an inexpensive way to a MQA decoding DAC- maybe Chris has some thought as he reviewed the AQ DF RED earlier. I assume if the DF decodes MQA one would use the 'passthrough' box in settings on TIDAL-correct?

 

Just used this combo here at CES 10 minutes ago. Really cool how it works and it sounds great.

 

You wouldn't use passthrough in this scenario. More to come ...