DSP volume control Roon/RPi vs Squeezebox Touch

Audio Gear Talk Raspberry Pi
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I just set up a Roon endpoint on a Raspberry Pi with the JustBoom digi HAT.

When using a Squeezebox Touch in that role (digital put of the Touch) , I have enjoyed used the Squeezebox’s digital volume control, via the Roon interface. The idea here being to reduce volume a little with the volume control so I have some adjustment available without dragging my sorry ass to the actual volume pot on my amp. I am, of course, aware that there is a bit of a quality trade-off in doing so.

Now with the Pi/HAT, one has to use the DSP volume control on in Roon and (horrors!) the lossless indicator light turns green, pointing an accusing fake-LED finger right in my face! The psychological pain of it all! Not to mention that the signal path light no longer tells me about potentially more important variable conditions like maybe a lossy file slipped in somehow.

So, a couple questions. Well, three, actually :slight_smile:

Is there any theoretical difference between Roon’s implementation of volume control and the the Squeezebox version, as controlled by Roon Remote?

Has anybody with patience and good ears listened to the two and arrived at an opinion?

And is Roon’s DSP volume done server-side or in RoonBridge?

1 Like
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Answer my own question department. (Partially, anyway.)

By simple logic, yes, volume control on either device has to be DSP.

Now, everybody claims their DSP volume control implementation is “high quality” or some such thing. Maybe everybody uses the same logarithm. Maybe it’s easy enough to do that everybody does it perfectly. Who knows. In any case, I’ve made the executive decision that finding the exact level that suits my headphones without dragging myself off the sofa is worth more to me than fretting about a tiny loss in the signal path. So there.

If anybody actually has looked more carefully into this, feel free to speak up and shed some authoritative light…