My new Gustard A26 DAC offers native DSD512 (or DSD256/DoP) on its USB input. So I’ve connected my M1 Mac Mini Roonserver via USB to the A26’s USB input. That’s working fine for standard lossless formats & MQA, but Roon isn’t offering me a native DSD option - only DoP. And, sure enough, that’s exactly what it provides to the DAC - a DSD512 source is resampled to DSD256/DoP and shows as such on the DAC.
What then should I be doing with Roon/Mac/DAC to establish a native DSD512 playout chain?
MacOS core audio does not support native DSD only DoP. DoP is DSD your not loosing any quality it’s just the DSD stream encapsulated in a PCM delivery. The DSD rate you can support is limited however to the highest PCM rate the DAC supports. DSD256 requires a PCM rate of 705.6, DSD512 requires much higher. Roon only supports up to DSD256 over DoP as I don’t think it supports higher PCM than 768. If you want native DSD ditch the Mac and add in a streamer or an sbc like the raspberry pi that will support native DSD on linux or use Windows.
Thanks - that seems to identify where the bottleneck is - the DAC supports DSD 256 over PCM, which is exactly what it’s reporting, so it’s doing its job. Just wondering then if there’s a way to bypass CoreAudio, but haven’t found an alternative yet.
Not unless your DACs manufacturer supports ASIO on Mac. Only one does to my knowledge and it’s not Gustard. Even then it’s not guaranteed to work as it’s not really supported on Mac.
Ah, all is resolved: I’d misread what passes for a manual (not Gustard’s strongest point) - the DAC supports DSD256/DoP or DSD512 Native over USB. As CoreAudio doesn’t support DSD, then DSD256/DoP is the limit. However, it supports DSD512 Native over LAN, which is ideal.
