Convolution Filters taxing my ROCK

Roon Software Discussion ROCK
1

So in the end I’ve pulled the trigger on Focus Fidelity (see this other topic) and I’m quite happy with it.

But now when using the generated convolution filters with higher res files (DSD) my little ROCK (Intel NUC i3 11th gen, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) can’t make it and the playback stops with the “hardware problem” error message.

If I should decide to upgrade its hardware what should I look for? Replace it for a more powerful CPU one? More RAM?

Unfortunately beeing RoonOS so closed it’s not possible to monitor the ROCK while it’s working and realize what part is bottlenecking the system.

2

Which is why many of us use linux, the DietPi for PC is very easy to install both it and Roonserver.

My guess though is CPU. You can get an idea by looking at the Signal.path during playback. If it drops to under 1.2x then cpu usage is an issue

3

DSD needs to be converted to PCM for convolution filters to be applied, which isn’t too difficult, but unless you configure it otherwise, Roon converts it back to DSD afterwards, and that is a far more intensive process that might be too much for your computer.

Maybe just have it convert to PCM and lave it there?

4

I have an 11th gen i3 NUC with 8GB RAM which never gets stressed by convolution.

As an example with upsampling 44.1>176.4, an 89k tap convolution filter, and handful of PEQ bands too it still shows over 20x CPU capacity.

5

Operations on PCM, even at high sample rates, are relatively lightweight and should not tax any supported ROCK device.

With DSD, however, things are very different. Converting from PCM to DSD is not a lightweight operation - especially to DSD rates at or above DSD256. Many of the devices on the ROCK supported NUC list will struggle with this operation at the higher DSD rates.

6

But the OP has specified DSD which is a whole other board game when it comes to processing power. I discovered this myself when using a 7th gen i3 NUC. It just couldn’t handle the workload. I ended up upgrading my core to a 13th Gen NUC Pro with an i5 CPU.

7

Just so. I was merely illustrating that convolution per se was not the problem on a similar ROCK box.

1 Like
8

It sounds like your CPU is the bottleneck, I would upgrade that first and look for one with high single core performance.

9

How do you do that? I was just able to force it by manually “downgrading” my DAC’s capabilities in the device settings window.

10

Thanks a lot. I tried dietPi live-USB and found out that the only PC able to fully apply the filters is my 9800X3D based gaming rig (that I’m obviously not using as ROCK because of its noise and power consumption). And it wasn’t a piece of cake for it too (1.3x, 1.5x with DSD512). Scary!

11

Yes, DSP on higher rate DSD is very system taxing; Roon doesn’t use GPU processing either. I personally do all that heavy lifting in HQPlayer instead which can use my NVidia Cards CUDA Cores to assist.

12

Configure sample rate conversion in Muse before convolution filters.