Turning MQA off Tidal


So i have a Chord Qutest DAC which does not do mqa unfolding. The first unfold is handled by my computer and I want to stay away from this as much as possible. Recently I went into roon and turned off mqa decoding. Now when I click on a song that is in mqa format, i tend to get what appears to be a normal hi-res file(above cd quality), and it sounds much better than mqa(for my dac atleast). Are mqa files on tidal the same as regular "hi-res" files found elsewhere? Thanks for the help. 
akwilson501
I have a PS Audio DirectStream DAC, which like your Chord, doesn't do MQA, and as well use Roon (on their Nucleus Plus streaming server).

A while back, probably a few prior versions of the Roon core back, when I'd play an MQA tune and have Roon do the first unfold, most of the results were "dull" sounding, but lately that's not the case.  Lately, when I play an MQA file, with Roon doing the unfolding, the resulting sound quality is as good, if not better than the CD version of the same album on Tidal.

I suspect the techies at Roon have some "special sauce" they've added to the Roon Core...
@ejr1953 now go to your dac settings in roon and turn off mqa core decoder. Now go and play the same mqa album with it off. You will get a higher resolution file without any unfolding done by the computer. Sounds better than mqa on my device, and definetly sounds better than normal CD quality. Just not sure what is happening. I had an app on my phone once that showed all mqa albums as hi-res audio formats, since mobile didnt support mqa at the time. This has all since been changed, but leads me to believe regular hi-res files are possible through tidal without the need for MQA.