DS-BridgeII and Roon 1.5 MQA issue

Audio Components DACs
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Yesterday, Roon released 1.5 which does first unfold of MQA. It allows DSP to occur on the MQA stream.

Apparently, there is a known issue with the current fw of Bridge II that causes many dropouts to occur when using DSP with MQA. Turning off DSP in Roon resolves the issue, or setting the DS config in Roon to decoder-only works around the issue.

Roon says they are aware of the issue and will be in touch with PS Audio/Conversdigital.

I wanted to make PS Audio aware of the issue here as well,

Thanks

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I needed to change this setting on my DS Jr.
Looking at the Roon 1.5 Feedback Thread last night - there was a question about (Maybe it was yours brett?) As, I canā€™t find it this morning. But, yes - changing the device settings:
MQA Capabilities from Decoder and Renderer to just Decoder worked for me. And, MQA no longer shows in the DS Jr screen.
Roon (Brian) said they where aware DS knew of the issue.

Hopefully a fix soon?

3

Found it!

1.5 with DirectStream BridgeII - dropouts MQA with any DSP

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Thatā€™s it. I believe the Roon boys may have come up with a novel method (working with MQA) to unfold, apply DSP, and retain the authenticated info. Something isnā€™t happy in the BridgeII with this method but as you say, setting the DS in Roon to ā€˜decoderā€™ works around it for now.

Brett aka Larry Post

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Thanks Brett,

I found your thread last night while Roon was updating. So, I knew exactly what to change. Hopefully weā€™ll get an update in the not to distant future.

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@brett66

Thanks for sharing the informationā€¦

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Thanks for sharing - Iā€™m seeing the same issue.

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+1

Same issue with the Bridge II and the DSJ.

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Does the MQA DSP feature work over USB to the DS or DSJ?

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Not the full decode and rendering. The Bridge II is responsible for the final rendering. You would only get the first and arguably most important decode in Roon.

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Would that mean - over USB - that Roon would unfold the MQA and apply the DSP filtering, and all of that would be received as MQA by the DSJ?

Or would it still be a Roon Wav signal?

I guess I just need to be patient for PS Audio to send out the software update!

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Youā€™ll get something the DSJ can play for sure, I believe it will be a wav, as the unit itself canā€™t decode MQA.

I would suffer no stress over thisā€¦Ted has said the MQA folks looked over or received a detailed flow of what heā€™s doing in the FPGA and they had no issues with it. I read this to mean they were freaking impressed and said ā€˜yeah MQA adds nothing to the mix here. Nice job.ā€™

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No. MQA full unfold happens in the Bridge over Ethernet.

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Paul, as of yesterday, Roon 1.5 performs the first unfold sending 96kHz 24-bit wav to the DS/DSJ. Currently, Bridge II isnā€™t happy with rendering this newly crafted Roon stream. Iā€™ve let support know about the issue, and Roon (Brian) is also aware itā€™s an issue.

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Thanks. Iā€™ll see what we can do. They havenā€™t reached out.

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Aloha Paul - Roon support claims to be reaching out to PSA to initiate an update for the DS/DSJā€¦

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Apparently they have. Rob from Roon reached out and said they had and that was news to me. If Rob says itā€™s so then it must be. Iā€™ll check with Matt n Monday and see where itā€™s all at.

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Hereā€™s what see with Roon 1.5 and an MQA track. DSP is Off in Roon, and if I set it to Decoder only, the only thing that changes is that ā€œDOPā€ is replaced with ā€œMQAā€.

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I was able to restore 1.4 from backup, and will ignore their broken update until they fix it.
It appears that they donā€™t bother with a lot of testing, as bugs donā€™t get much more obvious than thisā€¦

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First, how do you know the ā€œbugsā€ are in Roon 1.5? Second, the Roon people canā€™t possibly test all of the devices that are ā€œRoon Readyā€. That is usually handled by the company that makes the ā€œRoon Readyā€ device.