Are Roon & HQPlayer on the same machine? What is the DAC attached to?
Yes Roon and HQ player are on the same machine. I have an IMAC 3.5 ghz I7 The Dac is a 2qute running via rca to A sennheiser hdv 820.
Roon is heavier on CPU usage. This extra machine activity can create more or different computer noise that gets injected into your DAC via it’s USB interface.
It’s just the way things are if you have everything running on one machine with a USB DAC also hooked direct to that machine.
Most Roon/HQPlayer users try to get their DAC disconnected from the computer doing the heavy work and onto a specialized single purpose NAA endpoint for HQPlayer. Of course that’s not very practical for a headphone setup.
The other option is some type of USB isolation device between your computer and your DAC.
i have a usb isolation device as well. the cpu load is only about 10% i am not using
the computer for anything else. outside of internet browsing etc.
Perhaps post a screenshot of the pathway when Roon plays through HQP?
.SJB
Seems clean enough, no extra Roon processing.
I’d imagine @DrTone’s suggestion is the likely reason. There’s just more going on with 2 programs running.
.sjb