So, now Linn supports DSD playback, but my problem is, I cannot get it to work. It does not show up in any dropdown menu for native DSD in Roon.
To be clear, I’m using my SonicTransport i5, which shows up as a Squeezebox in Roon, with the UPnP bridge to get Roon to talk with my Linn KDS/3.
This is the issue I’m trying to figure out, because all I get is hiss with very light music playing in the background.
I’ve looked into the DSP setting, but those wouldn’t mean anything if I don’t show that I’m getting native DSD, will they?
At any rate, of course I have to wonder will converting DSD to PCM via Roon cause any real degradation to sound anyway? I’m not big on DSD, anyway, as a general rule, but there are certain DSD recordings were the mastering counts the most, and converting it to PCM might be the way to go. However, what about that degradation? Obviously it’s giving me a lossy path in Roon.
As I understand it the Linn Klimax DS3 expects a native DSD input so the DoP option won’t work.
I don’t know if it is possible to do native DSD through Squeezebox emulation and UPnP Bridge. It feels like a complex arrangement that might not be very robust.
Do you have much DSD content or are you just thinking about expanding into it ?
If it’s only an occasional thing then my understanding is that converting to PCM is no worse than a native PCM file of equivalent resolution.
Yeah, I mean, it might not be possible until Roon and Linn fully integrate, because as any Linn owner knows, the only way to get it to work is through the UPnP bridge. But, would that be why I’m not even showing the Native DSD option in Roon, though?
To answer your other question, no, I don’t have a lot of DSD. On the occasion I like to rip SACDs into .dsf to hear a different (sometimes superior, sometimes not) mastering of a favorite recording, and I can stick with converting to PCM if need be, just as long as the signal is not terribly degraded, or in the case of DSD to PCM conversation is it not so much that the signal degrades, but that there is noise on the upper end of DSD conversion which makes it a less than perfect signal?
If that’s the case, Roon has it’s 24Khz and 30Khz rolloff, via DSP, which should in theory, get rid of this upper end noise, beyond my hearing, anyway, as my ears tend to roll off at about 17Khz.
I guess that’s what I want to get at here: a.) Should I even struggle to get DSD to work right now, and b.) is whatever happens to PCM conversation really going to matter, when, at the end of the day, it’s the clarity and mastering that I want to listen to from my DSD files? I keep thinking that whatever Roon spits out, the Linn KDS/3 upsamples many times over, anyway, so as long as my signal during conversion isn’t terribly manipulated, sonically, I can just skip the whole DSD thing.
I suspect the Squeezebox emulation may not support native DSD, but I don’t know enough to say for sure. The UPnP Bridge adds additional uncertainty on top.
The DSD to PCM conversion is not bit perfect because some bits are left out, but I don’t think the result is significantly worse than an equivalent PCM file of the same resolution.
I’d suggest downsampling to PCM for now. I wouldn’t recommend spending money to add hardware that enables native DSD from Roon to your Linn unit for the moment.
