Honestly, I’m not sure if I know whether or not I like “bit perfect”. I assumed it was the best Roon could do possibly? I have Volume Leveling on because I usually turn on my favorites from TIDAL and put it on shuffle. Volume Leveling eliminates or evens out the changes in volume between songs that aren’t on the same album which is such an annoyance. I enabled Sample Rate Conversion because I thought it would add to sound quality. Not sure if it does or not. I set the “Max Sample Rate (PCM)” at “Up to 96kHz” because my AQ Dragonfly only does up to 24-bit / 96kHz. If I’m mistaken along my line of thinking with these settings and getting less than what Roon has to offer with sound quality - Please advise. Thanks!
Bit perfect means what goes in is what comes out, without change, damage or modification. Doing anything to the bit stream (bit errors, upsampling, volume leveling, DSP, etc), is going to break this. Typically upsampling, volume leveling, DSP would be called "enhancements’, but they will break the bit perfectness. The signal path light shows what’s happening at each stage along the way:
Yellow: low-quality (any lossy codec)
Green: high-quality (modified, so not lossless)
Purple: lossless (what goes in, comes out)
Blue: enhanced (user added processing, so not lossless)
I’m really just after the best sound quality without any annoying changes in volume between songs. So, turning off volume leveling causes the annoying changes in volume between songs to come back. I usually just select my favorites from TIDAL, select a track and put it on shuffle. I turned on volume leveling because I had a lot of volume changes between songs. I don’t know of any other way to solve that problem. Also, I’m using TIDAL HiFi but the majority of my music is live CD recordings of contemporary Christian Praise & Worship. Very few of my tracks on TIDAL are in the Masters category. The majority are just CD quality recordings. What do you think?
No. Its an either/or thing. Same with using upsampling.
Audio listening is all about what it sounds like to you. If you don’t think there is a difference in sound between vol. leveling or not, or, if so it is so marginal that the convenience of having vol. leveling is worth it; then you have your answer. Go with what sounds best to you with the convenience you want.
