MQA and what is best way with Roon

Network Audio
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Neil thanks for the MQA reminder. I did have a MQA question. Roon supports it fully and I do not have an issue with MQA rendering etc… but with my Sonroe which does NOT support, Roon does this lifting for it. My question is there a difference? Does one MQA decoder/renderer do a better job than another? I am hoping I am not loosing anything here. My DAC is the PS Audio Directstream, and I do have the network card for it, but was going to sell that. Guess I could compare the two, but wondering what others who know more about what MQA does and if there is a difference. I would think I would trust roon to do it right and it sounds wonderful…

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Roon only does first unfold to Sonore UltraRendu. You DS needs a bridge2 for full MQA. Then you don’t need roon. Roon First unfold is not bad if you do the other DS tweaks of matrix and i2S.

Some say Bridge 2 is noisy including Ted. I trust Ted. It all depends on your tweaks. Qobuz is usually better than Tidal and cheaper too. I run both but Qobuz 95 percent.

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Bridge II decodes MQA all the way upto 24/192 which is very good. A few recent Tidal albums show MQA 24/352.8 which Roon sees but Bridge/DS DAC decode as 24/176.4 . However, sound quality is obviously better that the other formats.
Currently, I am using Bridge only (unplugged Matrix XSPDIF 2 and the I2S cable) but with the addition of two network enhancers, namely Melco S100 & ADOT. So far, so good.
I got Tidal on 50% discount for the next 12 months, hard to refuse!

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What did you settle with? I found the bridge II lacking the sound I got by using the Sonroe → Matrix 2 and sold my bridge.

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I went on and off with the Matrix for a while, but finally settled with Bridge II for good. Both Matrix and Bridge have good sound stage! Matrix has a slightly more articulated high frequency, but Bridge II has richer and cleaner bass! Jitter is known to affect high frequency, so adding Melco S100 and ADOT optical media converter helped narrow the gap. It was a heavy investment, but to me, it was worth the cost. I am waiting for the grandchildren to go home after the festive season, so that I can test EMI absorption inside DS DAC using 3M AB7050HF. I do not see me disposing of Bridge II in the foreseen future.

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