Unfortunately no support.
Seems they’re too busy with ARC and new stuff than working with their existing subscribers
As (sadly) expected. The whole Mch thing is full of pitfalls, also without roon. And it’s a niche, niche, niche. That’s for sure one reason why they don’t focus on it, and likely never will. Even if there are officially supported NUCs, though not specifically for Mch.
Don’t expect fundamental help from them, before end of this year.
For me it’s a clear “help yourself”. I now had two situations having two USB devices attached to my NUC8i5 drawing a lot power from it, maybe too much. So, I simply decided to unplug these devices. I can’t tell you the exact core issue here, but this wouldn’t change the situation anyway. It all may came to something that the NUC platform may be a critical one for Mch. Again, for whatever reason.
If you want to stay with roon, think about a different hardware. You have several drives attached to your NUC, right? Try to change something here.
No feedback from roon, yet?
In the meantime, I had my own thoughts on this and more. Initially, I was thinking about a solution regarding sending native DSD via HDMI to my AVR, using roon. As you may know no device/software developed by roon is able to do the native DSD over HDMI trick due to limitations of the used hardware. So, neither roon nucleus nor ROCK@NUC nor roon Core@PC/Mac/Linux can handle this since these platforms are all based on standard computer hardware thus, excluding special audio or interface hardware.
And now, there actually is a roon ready device that can do this magic. The Eversolo DMP-A6. Just tested it, and it runs very nicely.
And in this situation I came back to our DSD/FLAC multichannel issue. The only change I did is to exchange the ROCK/NUC with the A6. Nothing else. And all connections and cables are still the same.
And what I can see so far, there’s not a single drop or stuttering with multichannel DSD at all.
There’s no buffer option in roon for this device, and resync time is still the default 0.
The A6 is officially able to handle max. DSD64 which is absolutely fine for me.
So, with a working native DSD over HDMI and the disappearance of any stuttering I believe I’ll keep the A6. Only drawback is the price.
And there’s still the open question in how far roon is able to say that their own ROCK/NUC combos are roon ready regarding the stuttering.
So far 
That is interesting. Without understanding all of what I read on this device it sounds like I could use Ethernet to this Roon Ready device with HDMI output to my receiver and replace the HDMI output from Nuc to receiver. The benefit would be DSD over HDMI without the conversion to PCM dragging down the CPU, although limited to DSD 64. Is that Multi-channel DSD or Stereo only?
I don’t have the stuttering issue with multi-channel but would like to have multi-channel DSD over HDMI that would benefit from room correction and bass management provided by the receiver.
I have a multi-channel DSD dac but it uses the 7.1 analog connections and bypasses the receiver processing capability and goes straight through the the amps.
You’re absolutely correct. Own tests: DSD64 with up to 5.1 works.
Which NUC and AVR do you use? I have the odd feeling that the issue is with some HDMI communication problem or roon’s own DSD2PCM conversion. My processing path says “x4” with DSD64 5.1 which I interpret as “sufficient”.
Yes, I looked at those, too but, far too expensive for me 
I have the NUC8I7BEH with 32gb ram, m.2 for OS/Database and 4TB SATA ssd for the library. Only gets dragged down with MC DSD 256 conversion to MC PCM with HDMI to Denon ARV-X8500H. Doesn’t break a sweat playing the MC DSD to the Roon Ready MC DAC.
You use ROCK or a different OS on your NUC? Unfortunately, there seems to be no official way to determine a basic system load when running ROCK.
What I read here somewhere is that any roon own software is not able to make use of more than one CPU core for each zone/signal path. But I’m not able to verify what the exact root cause is in my case. And to be honest, I spent too much time on this, already.
In some way… roon got me exactly to where they want me to be… “buy a dedicated roon (ready) device” 
Yes it is Rock running on the NUC.
Hhmm… roon’s own list of supported NUCs says nothing more than ROCK will run on model a or b. Nothing more, to my knowledge.
So, if there should be a significant difference when it comes to DSDxx x.x playback/decoding/converting they should have noted that in that list. Something like model a supports max. DSD128 5.1 or the like.
Though… I’m pretty sure that I’ve never read something on where roon’s DSD2PCM conversion is actually done, with roon Core or ROCK…? Never read something about that. At least, my roon Core CPU doesn’t seem to be impressed by DSD. I think the roon player’s signal path let’s assume that it’s done in ROCK.
Multiple threads open on this issue since late last year. No one from Roon has bothered to reply since April.
Yes, I think they will simply ignore DSD things in the future, because they think roon customers are not significantly interested in that. So, no future updates are to be expected in this regard.
Though, that MUST be said, roon is a company that is specialized in niche products and their customers. So, taking care of a subset of niche customers would be a… proper behavior. And although, we are niche customers we all are not the same . They spent so much effort in supporting DSD and multichannel, already. But could be that they currently think this is old fashioned and old/dead technology. They often enough emphasized their focus is on the future, whatever this means.
And finally, they have to earn some money, and if they think that there is significant revenue potential with their mobile thing they will invest in this, but not in ROCK, not in DSD, not in multichannel, not in a more… elegant user interface, not in a reasonable CD ripping and so on.
And they may also have some difficulties in getting affordable and competent software developers like many other companies in these days.
Someone once said “Fix the basics! And after that, focus on new things”. I totally agreed to that. And for some reason… I feel like roon should fix or improve some basics as well. But it seems that they somehow think differently about that 
. Their “next big jump” will be something with AI, so, nothing with music per se. And here I MUST stop
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Agree with everything you said here but the issue reported by me and others is all Mch above 48 KHz not just DSD. Almost all my Mch music is PCM. And I am able to play Mch through Roon only by Downsampling to 48 KHz.
Yes, unfortunately, same category. Absolutely out of scope .
What I think is even less… confidence-inspiring when they don’t even comment/answer on very concrete questions or demands, as read here so many times. But, also this may be part of their communication strategy. You can’t argue with someone who doesn’t respond . And… customer support is a pure cost factor.
You can input DSD to an AVR all that you want, but it is not compatible with digital room correction or bass management. It will be decimated to PCM.
AJ
Yep, forgot about that one.
That’s true. AVRs, when fed with DSD, have some one or two special modes in which they keep the DSD signal more or less untouched before rendering it through the speakers. In some cases it’s not even clear if the AVR may convert DSD to PCM anyway, in any case. I looked into some technical documents of my AVR, and it says that the used BB DACs can do a native DSD2analog conversion. Though, you never know if they are actually used like that. But yes, I don’t know of any AVR doing RC on native DSD. You have to put it into some specific “direct” mode to actually listen to DSD.
This isn’t affecting everyone, so I’m wondering what the common denominator that is a possible root cause might be. I have to say that I have never experienced it (ROCK/NUC → HDMI → Denon 3808 AVR). I can play MCH sources up to 192 kHz without problems.
The common denominator might be a 10th generation Intel NUC - mine is an older 7th gen?
Guess I was having a senior moment when I mentioned wanting to use room correction and bass management with DSD via HDMI. I was aware the signals would be converted to PCM for the digital processing. Not thinking clearly at the time. We have a kitchen/dinning remodel going on with carpenters, electricians and power tools generating tons of distracting noise. I’m sticking with that excuse.
My DSD Stereo/Multi-Channel playback setup, from Roon to exaSound S88 MKII or OPPO 205 playing SACDs, uses the 7.1 analog outputs from the devices to the 7.1 analog inputs on the Denon AVR=X8500H. That bypasses the AVRs digital crossover, Room Correction and Bass management processing and goes straight through the AVR to the NAD M28 amp. The recording has to have the sub channel (.1) for the subs to be engaged. Guess I would need something like the JL Audio CR-1 active crossover to engage the subs if there is no sub channel in the recording.
Okay, the exaSound S88 MKII is not able to do some analogue frequency crossover?
If the S88 has that capability I’m not aware of it. It does have DB adjustments for each of the speaker outputs but no crossover setting. Keep those at 0 with the adjustment disabled.
The OPPO does have Bass Management, speaker size, DB setting, distance and crossover settings, and I have played around with it but I assume that has to have digital conversion to PCM then back to analog before the output stage. Keeping the speakers set to large bypasses that.
The AVR does a separate sub enhancement (+ or - DB) that only works for the analog inputs. Don’t know if that is digital or analog but is totally separate from the Audyssey Room correction speaker settings. Doesn’t have any effect if there is no sub channel present.