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After upgrading to Firmware 10.3, Lumin accepts MQA Core decoded signal from Roon 1.5. (Several non-Lumin MQA DAC and Roon Ready endpoints do not support it yet, users of those products need to wait for a firmware upgrade.) So Lumin can play MQA+DSP in a MQA-compliant manner and retain all benefits of MQA.
Another possibility is this: Lumin users can try setting Roon Device Setup -> MQA Capabilities to “Decoder and Renderer” (default) or “Renderer only” for playback of MQA music. See if anyone think there is any sound quality difference or not when playing MQA music - even if the digital bits are the same. In the “Decoder and Renderer” case, the MQA Core decoder runs on Lumin and uses more processing power, in the “Renderer only” case the MQA Core decoder runs on Roon Core.
Although MQA official recommendation is to have the MQA Core decoder and the Renderer in the same device, I believe in the Roon model, i.e. heavy processing should be done in the Roon Core. Otherwise why spend the money on an i7.
Another possibility is this: Lumin users can try setting Roon Device Setup -> MQA Capabilities to “Decoder and Renderer” (default) or “Renderer only” for playback of MQA music. See if anyone think there is any sound quality difference or not when playing MQA music - even if the digital bits are the same. In the “Decoder and Renderer” case, the MQA Core decoder runs on Lumin and uses more processing power, in the “Renderer only” case the MQA Core decoder runs on Roon Core.
Although MQA official recommendation is to have the MQA Core decoder and the Renderer in the same device, I believe in the Roon model, i.e. heavy processing should be done in the Roon Core. Otherwise why spend the money on an i7.
