Auto Volume Leveling with networked DACs

Hi @brian

Roon is able to access my DirectStream DAC’s internal volume control via the RoonReady Bridge II, which is a 24 bit input.

The DirectStream internally has a 50 digital bit volume control and the FPGA sees 24 bit.

Is there any way to implement Roon’s Automatic Volume Leveling feature to adjust the DAC’s internal volume control (which it already can) but do so track by track?

So that playing 24 bit music to the 24 bit Bridge II could have Auto Volume Leveling done (by the DAC internally, but controlled by Roon and using Roon’s track gain info) without any bits lost (for the purists out there)?

If there’s no way at the moment, is it on the roadmap?

Cheers

We are not willing to do this by fudging the user-visible volume number around from track to track. There are many user experience problems with that (I’ve explained them in a previous post, but have no idea how I would find it).

So, in order to do this well, the DAC needs to support two volume numbers: one hidden one for the leveling adjustment, and one “public” one for the front panel, and then compose those two numbers internally before applying the volume adjustment.

Nothing wrong with that idea. We have much of the infrastructure in place to support it on the Roon side and in the RAAT protocol–but we haven’t yet encountered a DAC that had that machinery built out in a way that was ready to integrate with us on that point.

We’ve discussed the possibility with a few partners, and some have expressed interest in building their products that way, but none of those products are complete yet.

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Yeh no problems Brian. I had a hunch it isn’t as easy as I imagined lol

All good.