Could be old hat, but noticed something interesting re: available streams from Qobuz vs. Qobuz via Roon.
Was talking to my brother, and he mentioned an album to me that was available on his Roon as either a 24/48 or an MQA 24/256 (requiring some form of MQA decoder that can do that, etc.). I quit using Roon a while back, and I see the 24/48 plus a 24/176 flac that he does not see via Roon.
What’s the album -we can all take a look…
Hoff Ensemble, “Polarity”. But I sorta suspect that will turn out the same. I was wondering if anyone had noticed that you can get different results depending on your software.
I mean, frankly I should mention that I’m accessing Qobuz via the Lightning app. I’ll check if I get the same result if I pull it up directly on the Qobuz app.
Maybe its just that it “sees” whatever HW you’re playing on. On my iPad it just shows Redbook.
It must be somehow related to the hardware (upstream or down?).
On the Qobuz desktop program (windows computer) it shows up as 24/176. This one would play thru my laptop speakers.
On the same computer using Roon / Qobuz it shows up as 24/48. This connection goes out to my Matrix i2s converter.
On my IOS phone app it shows up as 24/48. This one would play thru my phone speakers.
On my Firefox Qobuz web player it shows up as 24/176. This one would also play thru my laptop speakers.
Interesting 
Edit.
When I play the track on my desktop version it then shows up as 16/44 while playing. The 24/176 note says “available only as a download” in the hi res version.
When I play it from Roon / Qobuz it shows up as 24/48
When I play it on the phone it shows as “CD Quality” 16/44
When I play it on Firefox it shows up as 16/44
It looks like you have to download (buy) the album to get the 24/176 version unless maybe you are on the higher priced subscription of the service.
Yeah - is kind of a head-scratcher. I wouldn’t think the Matrix would be limiting it to 24/48. Interesting.
Notice the note by the hi res symbol and also the actual playback resolution at the bottom of the page.
It looks like Roon / Qobuz has it at the highest available resolution.
This screen grab is from the windows desktop program
You won’t see Tidal’s MQA versions unless you set MQA as an allowable format, and only the Bridge supports full decompression of MQA on the DirectStream - the Matrix does not.
I looked in Qobuz via desktop, Roon and BluOs.
In Qobuz there are two HD versions, 24/48 and 24/172.
I think the issue is that 2L make available to Qobuz two HD versions, there is another 2L album called Solo+ (Stig Nilsson) that is in 24/48 and 24/192.
It seems that Roon only uploads one HD version, and it goes for the lower resolution version - 24/48 in both cases.
Same for another 2L album called “Bellezza Crudel - Vivaldi”.
So it’s clearly a Roon system issue, not hardware, they are just providing 16/44 and one HD version, the lower resolution if two are available.
The answer above was on the desktop versions.
It’s the same on my iPad, can get both 24/48 and 24/192 in the Qobuz iOS app, but only 24/48 in Roon (the Bellezza Crudel album).
Wait a minute… I think MQA is Tidal, not Qobuz.
Qobuz has some MQA too if that is what the distributor supplies.
Quiet Winter Night — an acoustic jazz project - play the 44.1/16 version, it’s 352.8 MQA
Polarity - an acoustic jazz project is another
Yeah, same here. I see the hi-res Tidal file but no hi-res Qobuz in Roon.
Do you mean within Roon? (I have “enable core MQA encoder” set to NO and MQA Capabilities set to “No MQA Support” and I still see MQA versions, as above.)
I see the above MQA versions on Tidal, not Qobuz. I plan on giving them a listen.
Play the 44.1/16 bit version on Q, it will show MQA 352
Thanks for the info… I was not aware of that.
Interesting. I’ve never seen MQA listed next to the file name in Qobuz. (Looking at “Quiet Winter Night” I see the “Hi-Res Audio” logo, but no mention of MQA.)
