Hi, hoping someone cam explain/help with my AV40 streaming (via Roon of course)
AV40 advanced settings report DSD upto 256,
however, ‘blue star’ shows conversion to 192 PCM when playing DSD files.
Have tried MUSE sampling on and off, makes no difference, still converts to PCM.
Any suggestions/explanations please ?
Regards
Howard
That is because Roon isn’t doing the conversion. Everything shown in the Signal Path AFTER the signal has arrived at the AV40 is the ARCAM’s processing. In the pic below everything below the RED line is the ARCAM telling Roon what IT is doing in term of signal processing.
I would look in the manual under DSD playback and see what ARCAM actually does with a DSD signal. Some equipment can accept a native DSD signal but them immediately turn it into PCM and then do the digital to analog step, like CHORD DACs. You might have to email ARCAM tech support to ask.
The DSD to PCM conversion is happening inside the AV40 and is beyond the control of Roon.
Whilst the AV40 obviously supports DSD it apparently does not have a native DSD DAC.
Hi, thank you, had not appreciated what the signal path was telling me. Now understood.
Howard
It is an AV Amp and will have DSP in the chain pretty much for most operations unless its in Direct Analogue mode. It wont matter if the DAC supports native DSD or not it will always be converted to PCM to deal with the eventuality of any DSP requirements such as subwoofer high pass/low pass filtering. Same reason all NADS only handle PCM to the DAC.
Native DSD Playback without a PCM conversion is something that you have to research in the equipment you purchase. Like I said, just because it accepts the format as in input, doesn’t mean that it actually processes that format.
That said, if native DSD playback is important, I would look into a DAC which does that and then send the output through the ARCAM as analog input, assuming that the ARCAM actually accepts incoming analog without converting it to digital. Sadly, so many amps these days are actually re-digitizing the analog in.
Hi thanks, I’ll look at other options for DSD playback, not too critical an issue a I’ve only a few DSD files.
howard
