I have the standalone DIrac Live software and I was having trouble getting it to work with Roon on my multichannel ExaSound E38 DAC after I upgraded from V1.
The old version of Dirac Live Standalone created filter for multiple resolutions and channels, so when Roon sent its signal to the Dirac Live virtual processor it was able to seamlessly map all resolutions and channels to the ExaSound that was by default set to 8 channels (no need to invoke the 2 channel driver). The Current Dirac suite (processor 1.5.12 and Dirac Live 3.2,3 will not work the same way. If you do the measurements for Stereo it will only support stereo, and the same for 5.1.
I finally got this to work after lots of frustration by sticking with the 5.1 measurements and using “Send Stereo/Mono Content as 5.1” and some other supporting settings (see image). This will convert everything up to 5.1, but with channel mapping only it will keep stereo in the L+R. I do not have DSP settings to upsample, but it is happening anyway, and this might have to do with the “workaround devices that misreport capabilities”. Not sure, but at any rate, this combination of settings allows me to keep my ASIO driver for the ExaSound in the Dirac Live Audio panel set to 8 Channels (last image).
Not sure if this was possible all along, but at least it now works for me, and it’s been bugging me for over a year. Setting the Dirac Processor to stereo will hide the 5.1 settings and vice versa, this extends to the Dirac Live 3 filter creation tool which is the crux of the matter. The old version allowed for all configurations and bitrates.
It is not clear to me if you are playing stereo sources in a stereo system (despite having an e38) or if you are running a 5.1 system. Please note that there are stereo and 8channel options for the ASIO driver.
Stereo is played using channels 1 & 2 in the 8-channel ASIO driver. Otherwise I’d need to switch to stereo mode in the Dirac Processor first AND switch to the 2 channel ASIO driver in the audio control panel. New DIRAC does not switch automatically and tracks all skip to the end when trying to play stereo when the 8 channel driver is selected. Now everything plays with no need to switch.
I am glad that you have a solution.
I do not have direct experience with using the new DL Stand-Alone with Roon because, in my brief efforts with DL StandAlone (using Roon or Jriver), I found that it would not change sample rate reliably although it would handle stereo or multichannel easily using the 8-channel ASIO driver. It is possible that the reason you are getting upsampling of 44.1 to 96 is that DL is stuck at 24/96. Are higher sample rate sources downsampled?
My solution for DL and Jriver was to use DL’s VST plug-in which easily adapts to sample-rate and/or channel config quite seamlessly. Too bad that Roon does not support such plug-ins.
JRiver works fine with or without the VST plugin. As you stated, Roon does not support plugins and Dirac does not export it’s settings so Roon can import them, so stuck with the virtual driver I am. I may go back to Dirac Live 1.0 if other issues crop up. Given my track record it’s only a matter of time. It’s pretty unstable - sometimes the Dirac Processor app switches to stereo and my settings are lost. I am still tracking down issues.
The old Dirac Live 1.0 standalone plugin (virtual WASAPI) created convolution filters for all common sample rates and there was never an issue.
The new Dirac Live 2.0 does not, so I have to upsample everything to a common sample rate (24/96). I think Diract supports up to 24/192, but I have not messed with this recently.
I suspect Roon is upsampling everything automatically due to the “workaround devices” feature - I am not using Roon’s DSP upsampling at all. Enabling that makes no difference; the upsampling option is greyed out and says “For Compatibility Only”. Either way, it is working now, but the non
