ecwl
500+ Head-Fier
I have tested this extensively because I too am stuck with Tidal because I live in Canada.When using Roon feeding M Scaler, should I have "Enable MQA Core Decoder" on or off? Is the idea supposed to be to send the M Scaler 44.1 and let it upscale to max? or is it ok to send the first MQA unfold in ROON into the M Scaler and then it upsamples accordingly?
Basically for different tracks, Roon will provide
1) 16-bit 44kHz lossless FLAC and 16/24-bit 44kHz MQA (which can decode up to 176kHz)
2) 16-bit 44kHz lossless FLAC and 16/24-bit 48kHz MQA (which can decode up to 192kHz)
3) no 16-bit 44kHz lossless FLAC and just the 16/24-bit 44kHz MQA
As @alxw0w said, basically if you can see in Roon the 16-bit 44kHz lossless version, you should always choose that.
But sometimes the non-MQA version is simply not available. In that scenario, after extensive listening tests, I have found that you should turn "Enable MQA Core Decoder" off as I find that just letting M-Scaler upsample the 44kHz MQA to 705.6kHz sounds better than unfolding the MQA to 88/176kHz and then letting M-Scaler to upsample to 705.6kHz.
Basically, I find that the transient response to be more accurate with the lossless 16-bit 44kHz version. Whenever I compare the MQA version of the track to the non-MQA version, I find that the notes from the same instrument can sometimes have shifting transients. And if you enable MQA core decoder, the transients also become softer for some notes but not others, making the sound even worse. But sometimes, Tidal just doesn't give you a non-MQA version. In fact, I'm still debating whether to downgrade my subscription from $20/month to $10/month since I would never decode the MQA version anyway. However, I worry that if I change my account, the track info on whether the original file is MQA or not would disappear from Roon. Not sure. Also I just want to support the artists. For now.