A few things:
- There’s a DSD gain adjustment setting that defaults to -3dB. This is conservative. you can try increasing it to 0dB if you haven’t already:
- If you have a headroom adjustment configured, you might try adjusting that up too, assuming it doesn’t cause clipping
- It’s proper (according to the SACD/Scarletbook specifications) to master DSD content at -6dBFS, whereas PCM content is generally mastered to at or near 0dbFS. Roon follows this recommendation when converting PCM->DSD, so on paper the stream is going to be 6dB quieter. Your DAC should be compensating for this when playing DSD vs PCM material, but we have no way of knowing/verifying whether it does or not.