Hi there,
I’m giving Roon a go via the ‘free trial’. Adore the UI, but frustrated that it’s downsampling my high resolution audio. I use an RME HDSPe MADI fx card to output my audio. It should have all sample rates from 44.1 to 192 kHZ available. However, when playing high resolution audio, it’s downsampling to 48kHz. What can I do to stop Roon from doing this?
regards,
Adam
I’m also noticing it’s dithering down the bit depth conversion. I don’t want this to happen, but can’t seem to adjust.
Hey @Adam_Casey,
It looks like you’re passing the signal through the OS mixer, instead of Roon speaking to the device directly. Can you post screenshots of your Audio Settings and Signal Path to confirm, like this:
Hmmm… You can ignore the bit depth stuff – that’s a direct result of Roon downsampling the 48kHz. The question is why Roon thinks the RME only supports 48kHz – what does the Playback tab of your Device Settings say? Is Exclusive Mode enabled?
I do have Exclusive Mode enabled. It seemed to be the only setting that allowed me to see the bit rate options, but, as you can see, it only highlights 48kHz.
Okay: weird thing I discovered. If I manually set the clock to 192kHz on my interface, Roon then says 192kHz is the only sample rate available, and automatically upsamples everything. I guess this is a solution to getting everything playing at the highest possible sample rate, but seems a pretty inefficient way of doing it.
Now you are outputting to the OS mixer – not to the card.
The RME drivers appear to report limited capabilities to Roon, which is weird. Unless other RME users can chime in, I guess it’s time for @support to pick this up.
Thanks for your help. Before @support pick this up, can you tell me where I can access the choice to switch between OS mixer and my card?
System Output directs the signal to the OS Mixer, all others (the WASAPI ones) are capable of directly talking to your hardware.
`Leafing through the specs of the card (196 output channels :-)), I can see why Roon is a bit confused, as it expects drivers to report 2 channels (or 6-8 for multi channels).
Anyway – not having any experience with this special birdy, I’m afraid the route through support is your best option. Keep in mind it’s a weekend though – contrary to popular belief, Roon staff is human and tend to spend their Saturdays and Sunday much like normal people. 
Ah, I understand what you mean by OS Mixer and my own ASAPI drivers now. Regardless, the sample rates seem to be locked to the sample rate that my card is initially set to. Thanks for your help.
One frustration I’d like to report; when I use other audio applications (including audio players), they generally give me the full name of the outputs, so I can choose which ones to choose. Roon just gives me a generic name for all of them, so I can’t differentiate between the outputs. Quite limiting. It would be great if I could see the actual full names of my outputs so I don’t have to use trial and error to find them.
Do you have the latest drivers installed for the card. The website shows an ASIO driver as part of the install and I would try that and see.
Hi @Adam_Casey ----- Thank you for the report and sharing your feedback with us. The insight is always appreciated and my sincerest apologies for the delayed response here.
Moving forward, to help aide in our evaluation of this behavior may I very kindly ask you to please provide us with a brief but accurate description of your current setup using this link as a guide. Additionally, from the RME website I see the card has the following:
“Three MADI I/Os - two optical and one coaxial are accompanied by one AES/EBU I/O and one analog monitoring output.”
Have you tried testing with all of the available interfaces to confirm if the experience is any different in Roon?
Additionally, how are things functioning with the MADI fx card in play, outside of Roon? Just curious from a data standpoint.
-Eric
PS: I would also give @Rugby’s suggestion a go if you have not already 
