I don't understand the core connection that Roon show me using

Kind of a mess… But As long as you know that you are using the dac of your choice… but it is annoying

What if you turn all off, then reboot roon, and do power them up in the right order, maybe

Roon reports what ALSA returns has the hardware audio device. Since USB is two-way communication the USB module can return a string. For Roon Ready / Tested it may just be trying to match this string to the device table.

I think…. For fun…. Connect another computer to each “DAC” and read the USB string. I’d be surprised if they are the same but if they are this could be the confusion of Roon.

Actually, maybe I wouldn’t be surprised. Mac maybe using the exact same digital board in both chassis?

MacIntosh do use modular DACs across their range.

At some point I will try @ipeverywhere suggestion, but for now I don’t want to do too much rearrangement of cables :slight_smile:

The MCD12000 does not use the McIntosh DA1 or DA2 DAC that appears in all their other digital
audio products.

Also, I don’t think the MCD12000 uses the circuit that the DA2 does. McIntosh hypes the MCD12000 as having two ESS SABRE PRO ES9038PRO DACs and independent circuits for each channel.

I think the DA1 used a Burr Brown DAC. I don’t know what the DA2 uses but McIntosh only mentions that it has a 32 bit DAC and does not mention ESS. But who knows for sure, the DA2 does DSD512, DXD, etc just as the MCD12000 does.

Dan

Maybe copy-paste code? :open_mouth:

1 Like
1 Like

Disconnect all the components of your audio chain and then connect them one by one, starting from the Nucleus towards the C53.
After connecting each device, restart Nucleus, then see which devices you see in Roon.
Maybe this will help you understand what is happening.

1 Like

Thanks for that info. I don’t know where I got the Burr-Brown reference :slightly_frowning_face:

That confirms that the MCD12000 is using a different chip.

Dan

1 Like

It’s not the DAC but the USB chip. The USB interface has something like a prom which gets written to and that includes a few bits of info including product id and descriptions. USB Audio strips the bitstream off the serial bus and passes it down I2S to the “DAC”. Using same USB receivers would make sense but programming them all to the same product does not. This is why I’m curious to what Mac is doing here.

1 Like

I will do some testing to see what I can nail down.

But in the past, manufactures have shipped Ethernet interface cards with the same MAC address.

1 Like

I have a McIntosh Integrated amp and there’s nothing special or proprietary about the way it communicates with an external DAC or computer. I use an outboard DAC with mine but sometimes switch to the built-in one and it just switches.

This might ultimately be a side-issue but just wanted to chime in as McIntosh owner.

Oh, and, it does make sense to program them all with the same device id. The DA1 and DA2 are add-on cards that, as far as I know, are not bought for a particular device.

I can see where McIntosh, which is a pretty small manufacturer in the grand scheme of things, wouldn’t want to inventory 5 or 10 different SKU’s for DA cards or have to do a last minute programming of one when it was ordered. That may be why Room has the “No your device?” question in the device setup menu.

1 Like

I think the problem is solved.

The USB port identifies itself as a “McIntosh DA2”.

So there is no way for Roon to know exactly what it is connected to and probably just guessed 53 and asks the user (if they care to look closely) “Not your device?”.

2 Likes

Dan
That’s about the same as my Mark Levinson.
It identifies itself to Roon as a Harman USB audio device with an ugly speaker box icon.
I just went and selected another ML DAC just so I would get a nice pretty icon.
It doesn’t change the parameters or anything else that Roon read back from the chip initially.

This topic was automatically closed 36 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.