I’m in my Roon 2-week trial period and am playing around with settings.
When using DSP Volume, to me the SQ actually seems better.
The sound stage imaging seems to improve. Does that make sense?
I’m listening mostly to classical music, or modern music with vocals and acoustic instruments, at fairly low volumes. I’m sitting to the right of the stereo sweet spot.
I have Totem Arros + Peachtree Nova150 integrated amp + Mac Mini.
When I switch to Device Control, I seem to get a brighter sound with more gain, and the sound stage shifts more to the right (in line with where I’m sitting).
My Nova150 has no front panel L/R balance control. As far as I can tell, Roon provides no software balance control either. Device Control might offer the best SQ if I could adjust the L/R balance, in my situation.
Totem Arros are great speakers, extremely imaging without any help. Run mine with a NAD amp. I found for my speakers the “sweet spot” was a very large area actually. I don’t run DSP volume as I like to get bit perfect playback, but I’ll give it a go and see if it makes a difference in my setup. It could also be the Peachtree affecting the sound stage.
Edit: Just ran a test. When I changed from Fixed to DSP volume I did notice a slight shift in the image to the right. I don’t think anyone would notice if they were not running such great imaging speakers like the Arros.
Funny, I have noticed the same. With dsp volume set to half the soundstage actually increases with some music .Might be because of some softening of the transients due to loss in resolution wich makes it harder for your ears to localize the source of the sound, in this case your speakers. For late night listening I actually prefer it. Sometimes a bit lower resolution like a mp3 version of a song does exactly the same.