Well, there more I read the less I understand it seems…how does that whole DSD thing is supposed to work…
When I open Roon Ready settings on my SoTM-200 Ultra Neo and set DSD playback mode to “Native” and play a DSD64 .dsf track, ROCK and my DAC both say it plays PCM!
However, when I set DSD playback to “DoP” ROCK and DAC say it’s pure DSD!
I miss the logic of this…
DoP uses PCM so shouldn’t it say PCM something like PCM352k or PCM384k on the DAC and in ROCK?
Why setting DSD playback to “Native” in SoTM results in resampling to PCM?
When I have my SoTM-200 connected to ROCK, I don’t see any DSD settings nor options to upsample to DSD in ROCK. It recognizes the SotM but underneath it says Amanero - Unidentified Device
I have tried both ROCK/SoTM aswell as direct streaming to DAC from my laptop and both act the same way.
Native DSD usually requires drivers which MacOS/Linux do not have. To get around this, DOP, takes DSD and encapsulates it in a PCM wrapper, that when your DAC gets the stream it will unwrap it back into native DSD. That is why DOP is showing you “DSD” in playback, because it is. When you switch it to native, the drivers don’t exist so it will convert to PCM.
If you want native DSD, and especially in high resolution, then, you need to contact SoTM and see if they have native drivers for your DAC. Or, switch out the SoTM and setup a small Windows PC running RoonBridge and the Drivers from your DAC’s manufacturer.
That’s some useful info, thank you very much.
I have contacted SoTM and they confirmed the Amanero384 already being certified by them for DSD playback.
I have Roon on my laptop that uses the same core as the SoTM, I’ve installed the latest Amanero drivers and tried to do DSD straight from the laptop’s USB output but in native mode the DAC went silent.
So, can we conclude that ROCK doesn’t do native DSD, only DoP as it’s Linux based?
It is the device that your DAC is plugged into that needs the drivers. This would only be the ROCK server, if you were plugging the DAC into the ROCK NUC. Given that you are using a SotM, is it the SotM, which must have the drivers for the specific DAC you are using patched into the SoTM’s linux build. Did you ask SoTM if it will work in Native DSD with your specific DAC? Which DAC is it?
ROCK as a server feeding my DSD DAC through a Windows based endpoint gives me blissful native DSD256. Listening to it right now.