Looking to get various resolution files to output their native sampling rate to my DACs (KEF LS50W for speaker listening and Schiit Jotunheim for headphones - both USB).
What Roon, Audio MIDI and Tidal Masters setting should I be using?
Thanks in advance.
Bill
Settings -> Audio then enable your device and click on the gears icon.
In Device Setup -> Show Advanced -> (Max Sample Rate (PCM), Max Bits per Sample (PCM) and Max Sample Rate (DSD)). Also in Device Setup -> DSD Playback Strategy. Depending on your endpoint device, you may not see this field.
In DSP Engine -> (Sample Rate Conversion and DSD Sample Rate)
If you are upsampling to DSD rates, you probably want to “Parallelize Sigma-Delta Modulator”.
I’ve never touched Audio Midi or TIDAL Masters. Roon will handle your TIDAL account.
Have fun.
I Turn off all processing. Turn off all upsampling. Set volume fixed. Turn off - 3dB adjustment.
This is exactly what I do. Essentially everything is turned off.
Been burned so many times by software and software updates. Bugs in software volume control. Bugs in Apple Core audio sample rate converter (no dithering). I feed ONLY native bit perfect files to my DAC. I don’t trust any other converter. Neither should you.
The fact that so many folks report differences with different converters tells you that file conversion is often NOT transparent.
I use Roon for the interface only.
Currently there is a bug with AAC 22.05 KHZ files. In my experience, there are often bugs in audio software. Lack of dithering. Poor choice of filters. Digital filters too small. Rounding errors due too poor choice of precision. It goes on and on. Software engineers rarely have degrees in audio engineering and time series analysis and methods of signal processing. It is the blind leading the blind.
Example, Schiit Audio simply truncated the last bits on their multibit DAC - no dithering was applied! Not to pick on Schiit but this just shows you how very little technical knowledge the industry actually has. Benchmark claim that almost no devices they tested are able to properly cope with digital inter sample overs which exist on nearly all pop and rock music! The industry is rather an embarrassment technically.
Yikes… 
Hey @wgb113 , just to add to @xxx 's great info, if you enable ‘Exclusive Mode’ in Device Setup (see below) you don’t need to touch or worry about Audio MIDI’s settings.
If you see “Lossless” in the Roon signal path (see below), you can be assured the output from your Mac Mini is Bit Perfect.
@DrTone, is this true???
Obviously it is.
I think you misunderstood the, by now 1 yr. old, joke. 
Ooops? Well, I accidentally stumbled across this posting yesterday but it made sense to me, definitely. There are plenty of voodoo-devices on the audiophile market with a pompous look and dubious electronics inside 
.
With that, I completely agree.
