DS-BridgeII and Roon 1.5 MQA issue

Funny thing - Microsoft, for example, does a fairly exhaustive job of testing their products on thousands of different PCs and parts that they support. I would think that testing with the dozen or two DACs that Roon supports would be at least cursory.
I don’t know where the bugs are, but I know that the DSD works using 1.4 and not 1.5.
I can wait for an update until someone fixes the problems.
Meanwhile I’m playing with Audirvana+, which offers Tidal tracks shuffled in with Qobuz tracks.

Roon is not Microsoft and I seriously doubt that have asked every vendor to supply them with DACs and endpoints so they can test them. I’ll let you think about that for a moment…

Also, that Donald Fagen MQA track is an “MQA 48kHz” track. In other words, it will never be more than that even when played on a DAC that supports MQA decoder and renderer. In other words, what you saw was what your should have seen.

“I seriously doubt that have asked every vendor to supply them with DACs and endpoints so they can test them.”
I would be astounded if they had not, since there is no other way to claim that a product is supported and runs the Roon endpoint SW.
Perhaps these issues don’t concern you, but the MQA track should be showing as MQA, and there’s that white bar across the display. I view this buggy and poorly tested at best.
So I’ll wait until the vendors work it out.
I’m not interested in upgrading to a version of software that’s broken, so get over it.

I don’t care if you use Roon 1.5 or not. My only point is that laying the blame at Roon’s feet might not be the right place.

Roon made a change. It stopped working correctly. Who to blame?

If only life were that simple. You don’t know how many times when I was working at Apple that we came out with new software that broke another developer’s software because they did not follow our API guidelines. Even when we warned they were not in compliance.

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I feel sorry for PSA as we shouldn’t be expecting them to keep paying for our free updates on something that really is a bonus anyway. Especially as MQA is not high on their list of priorities. Octave is the PSA future and this is where they are putting their time into. Supporting 3rd party software (including Roon) is a never ending task.
Having support for Roon/MQA without DSP is enough in my opinion.

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Your Apple analogy is irrelevant. PS Audio did not make the change, Roon did.

I believe the point was that Conversdigital may not have followed the MQA guidelines when they implemented MQA decode and render in the BridgeII. PS Audio just wraps up the firmware they receive.

Or possibly Roon came up with a new way to allow DSP and slipstream the MQA extra info back into the stream post DSP and the standard MQA guidelines don’t necessarily allow or account for this to work in all cases.

Conversdigital has been responsive in the past based on what I’ve read. I bet they turn something around pretty quickly.

I don’t think MQA is the spawn of Satan but I also don’t think it’s the Messiah either. I do believe some of the MQA-ized albums on Tidal did use a better master than their CD counterparts, and some vice versa. It’s all sounding so good via the DS there is no reason for me to complain.

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My analogy was is spot on. @brett66 nailed it…

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Apple does not play well with others.

I suspect the second scenario; Roon broke it.

If Roon “broke it”, why does this problem not exist with every DAC that supports MQA instead of only those that use the Conversdigital card to provide MQA support??

Oh, wait…we wouldn’t want logic to get in the way of fanboyism!

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Not using Roon the DS/Bridge combo got no MQA issues at all


Has to be a Roon issue…

No, it does not have to be a Roon issue. It is a Roon interaction issue with the Bridge II. Where the fault lies is not known at this point. It could be with Roon and it could be with Conversdigital.

Again, the fact that this problem does not occur with other MQA DACs suggests the problem is with the Conversdigital card. We should know soon enough.

Roon launched an update that doesn’t work well with the Conversdigital card which they certified themselvelves. Where the exact cause is we’ll probably never know but I’m pretty sure it will be solved :slightly_smiling_face:

Guys, let’s be kind to each other./ They’re both true. The changes Room made broke the device. But not all devices. We’re working on it with Converse.

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Roonlabs states the DS/BridgeII combo’s are Roon tested ( https://roonlabs.com/partners/psaudio.html ) ;

“We want Roon to work with all the hardware out there, but most importantly, we want our users to have confidence that the products they have (or are considering buying) will work well with Roon. To achieve that, we came up with a second hardware partner program called “Roon Tested”. We need to have a working relationship with the manufacturer to make this happen.

The idea is that we test various manufacturers’ audio endpoints with Roon, using a much more rigorous test than any normal user would. The manufacturer also tests Roon with their product, and makes sure we don’t do anything bad to their endpoint. Because the manufacturer has provided us with their hardware, we can test our software against every device when we make new releases.”

No hard feelings at all :wink:

On my DSD, I’m showing MQA. I have 1.5 loaded as Roon Server on a QNAP Nas and MQA is being displayed at 44.1k and 24 bits but the same album earlier displayed DOP That confused me. Though now they show MQA. I don’t know if the period after MQA signifies anything?

Please, let’s not be unpleasant or insulting.

I suspect Roon failed to take something into account when they made changes. They promise to test endpoints, and to make certain their software works. But it does not. That is, they did not live up to their promise.

Fortunately it appears they are are working to fix it. I have every reason to believe they will do so.

I guess i’m a bit confused. Is this issue suppsoed to be with Roon 1.5 streaming MQA to DS via the bridge? If so, I have no issues here, however I don’t use Roon’s DSP; I have all roon processing features turned off and the DS acts as it should, unfolding and decoding to the correct bitrate. Not sure this post really helps any…

Steve