· Other
· How do I ...?
· Other
DSD native with Marantz Cinema 50 (now Roon Ready)?
music library and Roon Core on Qnap NAS, Unifi network, Core on the same vlan as Marantz
What‘s the issue, the conversion to PCM? As the signal path shows, this happens after Roon hands off the stream to the Marantz, inside the Marantz. Nothing Roon can do about that.
Hey @Andrea_Riela,
Thanks for writing in! Based on the screenshot you’ve provided, @Suedkiez is correct in the above statement, the conversion seems to be occurring after Roon hands the signal over to the device itself.
I’d check the Marantz itself for any DSP occurring. Let us know the results!
Do you use regular passive speakers (wired) or wireless ones?
In case you use active wireless speakers the end of the story is pretty clear.
No Marantz or Denon amp/AVR is able to transmit DSD or multichannel wirelessly through HEOS.
So in order to deliver DSD stereo somehow it has to do an internal DSD2PCM conversion we seem to see in roon’s signal path.
@Andrea_Riela, has now reach out to the community’s Marantz users for guidance.
I’d suggest continuing this discussion on that topic, as this support topic will automatically close shortly.
wired speakers (Monitor Audio)
@benjamin a bug in Roon perhaps? the “info” displayed by the AVR is reporting “signal DSD” and also on screen. Why here Roon is reporting there is a convertion from DSD to PCM?
if you see the attached pictures, the behavior is expected for multichannel (DSD and FLAC), but not for DSD (64 or 128)
No, not likely a bug.
Most AVRs receive then internally convert DSD to PCM. That is a fact — but one they do not reveal to you. Roon, though, does reveal to you what is happening behind the curtain.
AJ
Hi @Andrea_Riela,
In all cases with a DSD source the Marantz is reporting back to Roon that it is converting DSD to PCM.
I’m 99.99% sure that Roon is transparently displaying what the Marantz is reporting.
The Marantz screen is correctly reporting what the input signal to Marantz is … however, this is not what is arriving at the DAC chip.
I don’t know that Marantz device well, but it’s not the first time that users are surprised about undocumented DSD to PCM conversion.
I would suggest contacting Marantz technical support to comment.
Because this is happening AFTER Roon hands off the stream to the Marantz. Either the Marantz performs this conversion or it reports it to Roon in error.
Any form of DSP inside the Marantz is likely to convert DSD to PCM. You could try if enabling the Pure Direct mode of the Marantz makes a difference:
no differences 
either Auto or Direct /Pure Direct is reporting exactly the same on both the screen, and on Roon
This discussion seems related? Unfortunately, it seems to confirm that the 60 does not do DSD and the 40 does, but says nothing about the 50.
It does say that Pure Direct should make it work, though, if it’s supported at all.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/dsd-over-hdmi.2527521/
Maybe ask Marantz support if they think it should work with the 50.
well actually it seems not the case to me. They are talking about Cinema 60, and in particular DSD over HDMI, while here we have DSD via HEOS protocol over ethernet (PC/NAS). Am I wrong?
Yes. I was editing maybe while you were answering:
But it does mean that not every Cinema model can do DSD. Question remains about the 50.
Somehow I always thought that the topic was HDMI, I thought you had mentioned this somewhere at the start. And I never thought DSD would work over network, sorry if I neglected to point that out. There was this already here in the thread:
Hi again @Andrea_Riela,
Check out this post …
exactly very bad surprise but of course this is not a Roon issue. But thanks Roon to open my eyes 
the DAC is the same for Cinema 40/50 and Denon 3800/4800, so I expect the same behavior
This topic was automatically closed 24 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
