DSP Volume vs Volume Leveling?

Why does DSP volume show the green “degraded” dot and Volume Leveling shows the blue “Enhanced” dot? Is one more pure than the other?

They use the same kind of processing, and although it’s not bit-perfect anymore, they should not degrade the audio quality. Is there anything else going on in the signal path?

It’s quite a lot more :slight_smile: What’s the path for DSP volume?

DSP Volume:

Volume Leveling:

Our valued member @DrCWO measured and posted about the effects of Roon’s DSP volume control here.

Reading that should put your mind at ease regarding the signal path dot color.

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I read it, the best I could. But which is better? Leveling or DSP? And why doesn’t leveling show the green dot?

The two cases are different from Roon’s perspective. In the DSP volume case, it’s the microRendu doing the processing, not Roon. In the volume leveling case it’s the other way around. Not sure why different lights though or what they’re supposed to mean.

Both use the same mathematical precision, so there shouldn’t be the slightest difference, unless you want to believe that a couple more computing cycles in the endpoint could adversely influence your DAC.
Note, that I wrote “believe”, since nobody ever showed evidence of that being the case…

But what really interests me is why you would want to substitute one for the other, because their use cases are not the same.

Political decisions at best, I’d guess.

My Dac doesn’t support volume control. So I have to choose between the two.

As @Marin_Weigel said, volume leveling and DSP volume are two different things, so it’s not an either-or choice. The former is used to automatically normalize the volume from track to track based on loudness information, while the latter is simply a manual volume control implemented in the digital domain. It looks like you need the latter. You can also use both.

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Seems tedious, trying to adjust volume via the leveling dialogue - much easier to use the proper way.

If you read the article, you probably were able to deduct from the numbers mentioned within, that any artifact introduced (by either method) is orders of magnitude smaller than you could dream your DAC, amp, speakers and ears would be able to resolve.

You may safely put your quest to extract the nth degree of resolution to rest and turn your attention to the music, instead.

YMMV

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