Fiio M15 DAP downplaying the track quality

My Roon core is on my laptop, and I listen on Fiio M15 DAP downplaying the track quality. I see that the source is Purple (all the way it is purple) thru this phone (RAAT), after that, it is default output (openSL ES) it shows green.

Post a screen shot of your signal path and someone can explain it to you.

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Done. Thank you for the hint.

Maybe because you are upsampling from 44.1 to 192. Turn off the upsample and I think it will show as lossless purple.

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I’m trying to figure out where this is happening… Sorry, to sound so dumb. :slightly_smiling_face:

It’s an Android DAP. Roon on Android uses Android System audio path and does not bypass the tweaks that Fiio put in to avoid system resampling a horrible feature of Android. It’s the same on all DAPs using Android they all downsample to the base rate Android tells Roon it supports. No way around it i am afriaid until Roon change how they do things on Android.

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Oh my God… I totally understand what you meant… Looks like my yearly subscription is of no use, as all my devices & DAP’s are Android based… Big OOPS…

Just to add that the green indication on your Output doesn’t necessarily mean that the output is not bit-perfect or of lower quality than the source signal (or the signal of the RAAT).
It simply means that Roon is unable to guarantee the quality, because the output process gives no indication of what it really does. In other words, if you added no additional processing or DSPs, the signal is still perfect, otherwise it may not be.

Same happens if you throw your signal to a sound card on a PC :
If you give “exclusive mode”, then Roon is purple, but deny exclusive mode (letting signal pass through the System mixer) then the signal becomes green. Although (if you added no processing in the mixer) the signal the sound-card produces is identical to the exclusive mode.

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Appreciate your clarification. Makes sense too. Thank you.

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Unlucky. It doesn’t stop me using it on my Hiby R5 DAP and still sounds great I get up to 44.1/24 before it resamples. Before they forced the resample Roon was generally a garbled Skippy mess on Android so it fixed this but as the cost of bit perfect playback across all formats.

The default Android audio driver is to blame. Audio on Android has always been ignored, unfortunately. DAP makers and app makers (see UAPP) create their own hi-res driver. Roon hasn’t so the default one is used. I have the M15 as well and I listen to Roon plugged in as a DAC or through airplay which guarantees CD quality. I think an audio driver is so low on Roon’s team list of priorities that I’m not even hoping for one.

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Sad Indeed… :pensive:

You get more than CD quality on a dap using Roon. I get 44.1/24. Why use Airplay its no better.

Because the default android driver offers zero guarantee of the quality. So I use the one that offers what it says it does.

I bought the FIIO M15 just to enjoy Roon with my earphones
Now I learn that it is impossible for Roon to take full control of Android sound card. So it means that everytime I listen to Roon with the fiio, music will be handled by android
Deeply upset …

I have the same problem with fiio M11 pro. Roon will use the what ever the sample rate previous app used, then resample everything to that rate. I am using the latest beta firmware, the status bar will show current DAC sample rate.
Tidal native app will switch to native sample rate and does first unfold for MQA track. With Roon, if I use other music player set rate to 44.1khz, all 44.1khz MQA will play bit perfect and get unfold and rendered, but all 48khz will be resampled 44.1khz therefore not bit perfect. UAPP can play all sample rate natively include DSD.
It is really Roon’s software limitation, because Tidal native app can switch to native sample rate on the fly.

How does the MQA happen you cant turn on the Roon core decoder for Android endpoints. It certainly doesnt on my Hiby R5 and it’s outputting 44.2/24 most of the time.

M11 has hardware decide, so if roon play bit perfect it will be decoded. But roon only support one sample rate whichever I used right before I open roon. Tidal app only play 16bit but with correct sample rate. Only UAPP can play tidal correctly.

So it handles full mqa not just renderer. That’s good and explains it then as R5 is only mqa renderer not decode and renderer.

Have we heard any sort of response from Roon about this?