Have some trouble about the amount of bass in playback in diff formats…have to adjust the levels, anoing
I like DSD very much, so i tried to do a custom profile in DSP setting in ROON, Se pic…camera pic!
My setup:
ROON ROCK i3BNH>ALLO-USBridge>Pro-Ject Pre S2 DAC>AMP, all via Ethernet cabel
My own library is DSD format, have TIDAL HIFI too
Been amazed off the sound for cheap…kinda…
This is playback from TIDAL, processor speed is just 1.2
Anywone else doing this?
I do something similar but on the beefier i7BNH NUC note that at 1.2 processing speed you might be close to the edge of stable performance. 1.4 x was I believe the bottom end of reliable. YMMV depending on what else you’ve going on like multiple zones playing and/or if you enable any other dsp features.
Using ROON on my own, so dont have any zones to play to…Native DSD playback altso doing great
That’s a huge strain on your processor, I would be concerned that you’d be shortening the life of your hardware. Ultimately you’re getting Roon to ‘fill in’ almost all of the data (over 99% for full DSD512 from 96kHz), which could potentially cause artefacts in the listening experience too.
It may be worth comparing something that’s on your library that is also available on Tidal to hear the differences if any!
Thnks for answer…
Wrote about this after 1 week of testing…
From DSD64 and up…in the beginning i have bed a dollar this i3 processor newer could do this but…
Did some A/B testing from library to TIDAL…DSD in favor…could be diff in other systems though
In the MQA format…hmm actualy not much diff…prefer DSD playback though…course the diff in sound reproduction(bass/treble) from one to another format
About heat from the NUC…have set the fan setting to balanced…not a problem when playback
Additional info…Spent several hours to set the ALLO board up… in default only possible to play up to 96KHz and 64DSD…have to type:"dietpi-config"to get in to the setting to change and so on…
This is a non-issue. CPUs are designed to run at whatever their max TDP is reliably. If you have poor cooling in the system, then maybe. But if the cooling is balanced for the system, you will be fine. (High overclocking can kill a CPU prematurely, however, but given the OP’s description, I doubt they are doing that.)
(FWIW, I run lots of systems, both desktops and servers, at 100% CPU load 24x7x365 doing 3D rendering, which is very compute intensive. Never had a problem with killing CPUs this way.)
I had a SonicTransport i5 that did DSD256 fine but balked at DSD512. I now have the i7 and DSD512 is great along with very snappy interface, quick searches, etc. This is all without any DSP, just volume leveling. I doubt an i3 would be up to it all.
I’m doing this another way - I am having the endpoint (Teac NT-505 upconverting to DSD512). Anyone have any thoughts on letting Roon do this vs the endpoint?
To anyone that is upsampling or downsampling as they can or need, it comes down to what do you prefer the sound of, not what others think, but based only on what your ears (and brain) are telling you.
If you aren’t buying the equipment to listen to the music then you are doing it all wrong and have the basics backwards.
Allow me to clarify… I’m not concerned with what others think about how their upsampling sounds. There are too many variables, starting with the listening environment, to get a meaningful answer.
Rather, what I’d like to know is, if you have a DAC capable of performing an upsample, what’s the point of letting the Roon core do it? Are you not just stealing processing resources from the Roon server that might be better served ensuring an uninterrupted stream of data to your DAC, which has dedicated resources for upsampling?
I know my last post didn’t reflect that, but that’s where I was going with it.
Different algorithm gives different sound. Roon even has multiple options to tune that, and HQPlayer has far more.
For NT-505, its network input is limited to DSD128, so you can’t use Roon to upsample to DSD512 and send it to NT-505 via RAAT.
The conventional setup is to have a dirty side and a clean side and isolation between the two. The dirty side does the heavy lifting, all of the audio processing that can be done earlier in the chain and all of the Roon searching and database stuff. The clean side is as minimally light as it can be, with the cleanest power you can feed it.
In my setup the dirty side is an i7 Windows 10 server which runs Roon Server and HQ Player Desktop. I do DSD 512 upsampling and room convolution in HQ Player. The server is in another room from the audio system and connects by Ethernet.
Ethernet provides the isolation. Some people prefer fibre optic here, but I haven’t tried it.
The clean side consists of a micro-Rendu running as an HQ Player NAA then USB into a Matrix Audio X-SPDIF2 then IIS into a Holo Audio Spring 1. The Matrix Audio replaces the Spring’s USB module, which wasn’t the best input for it. The Spring works in NOS mode and uses a resistor ladder to do the D/A conversion.
There are other ways to set up, but this is the one I have found works best in my system.
Andybob…thnks for info
Thanks for that explanation, Bob. For me, I’ll continue to let the DAC do a little of the “dirty work” - sounding real good so far!
