Yes, as @WiWavelength says, let Roon downsample everything to 44.1 kHz (in Roon’s device settings for the speaker) because Roon will do a much better job of it. IIRC, Airplay is marked with a green dot, i.e., high quality, whereas Roon offers bit-perfect.
Changing the “Quality” setting in HEOS is not having an impact on the M1 or DSP2000NE. Even on “normal” the path is shown losssless with no DSP.
For some reason, with the 150 the lowest max sample rate you can choose for it in Roon is 48kHz. So if you want Roon to do the downsampling to 44.1kHz instead of the 150 it looks like you have to do it with Muse’s sample rate conversion instead.
I’m a bit confused. Why would you want to down sample? Doesn’t that affect the quality of the music is a negative way? Or is it that Roon does a better bit perfect conversion versus what the speaker will do?
The device does it regardless, so let Roon do the conversion because it does it with excellent precision.
@jcharr1, the option is up to 48 kHz.
Right. But the problem is that if you only set the max sample rate in the speaker settings and play a 48kHz+ file Roon sends it as 48kHz and the 150 still downsamples that to 44.1kHz. If you want the 150 to not do any downsampling at all and let Roon do it you have to set Muse to resample everything to 44.1kHz. I have absolutely no idea if any of this actually affects the sound quality, but if you have hi res files and don’t want the 150 doing any sample rate conversion it’s not enough to just set the max sample rate in the device settings.
A 96kHz file with only the max sample rate set for the 150 and no Muse conversion.
WIth Muse custom converting everything to 44.1kHz. The 150 is no longer downsampling.
I guess Roon would convert 192, 96 kHz to 48 kHz, and 88.2, 176.4 kHz to 44.1 kHz. Evidently, the Denon does it different.
I’m a little suprised this wasn’t covered off during certification. But then again, Hegel and Cambridge Audio do something similar, too.
If the 150’s down sample to 44.1, stick with CD quality to start with.
I see some of you have parametric EQ setup, but have bass and treble adjustments on the 150.
I would suggest removing the bass/treble adjustments and stick with the PEQ in Roon.
I’d imagine that’s the devices bass management as it mentions placement. Like most DSP enabled speakers you can set the placement to improve bass response.
I don’t have this device, but according to another thread this downsampling occurs if you have enabled Airplay on the Denon Home 150.
I turned off airplay on the 150 via the heos app and it’s still down sampling. @WiWavelength has advised it won’t receive a higher rate. Can you put up a screen shot of your signal path?
I think he’s mistaken the inbuilt DSP on the device only operates at 44.1 which is why it’s downsampling and has nothing to do with Airplay. You can defeat the eq in HEOS and see if it changes anything but as it likely is always active in the signal path even if its doing nothing it might not change Airplay would have never revealed this so either way is the same but you choose which you prefer to use. If removing the HEOS eq changes it apply the EQ via Roons Muse instead.
Playing 48/24 via HEOS shows its playing at 48/24, but not from Roon. The 150 still down samples even with the EQ (Bass/Treble) on the 150 reset to 0 and airplay disabled. If @WiWavelength is correct then HEOS is displaying 48/24 but its streaming at 44.1/24. Makes no sense.
Heos is displaying the input of the file not what it’s doing under the hood. This has been explained.
It is a numbers and compatibility game, all about publishing big numbers and providing widespread format compatibility.
Most consumer audio components operate as black boxes. They generally indicate what audio formats they are receiving, not what they actually are doing with those formats.
For example the Denon Home 150 Info Sheet proclaims support for DSD256. Yeah, it will accept DSD256 input. But anybody who believes that little mono wireless speaker is playing native DSD without internally downsampling to much lower rate PCM is foolish.
Denon Home 150 allows for gapless playback of high-resolution files including 192kHz/24-bit FLAC, WAV, ALAC and DSD 2.8/5.6MHz via Network or rear USB port
AJ
Yep,
Here is specs from website:
For me these are just around the house cheapy speakers. I have a home theater system that I use Roon with, using Cambridge streamer and now Wiim Ultra streaming to a Marantz AV10. Maybe if Roon ever certifies the Marantz I won’t even need the streamers anymore. Sorry didn’t mean to go out of scope here.
So what’s the benefit for Roon to certify these home speakers if Airplay (Roon Tested) works just the same. Marketing??
It’s not a day and night difference or anything, but I can hear a small but noticeable difference in sound quality playing to the 150 over RAAT vs AirPlay. To my ear at least there’s a bit of added clarity using RAAT. And when grouped with my RPi 4 with a Hifiberry Digi2 Pro hat they sync much better than when grouping it with my Apple TV over AirPlay 2. So far it’s just been a smoother experience with RAAT.
I did a little very unscientific testing with letting the 150 downsample higher res files vs having Muse do it. Again, not a night and day difference but I do believe with Muse it’s better with a bit more clarity.