Currently, I'm trying convolution in Muse. For regular PCM files no problem at all. But convoluting DSD seems to be slightly too demanding for my CPU (processing ~0.9). Thus DSD starts to stutter within a few seconds. Now, I almost always play through shuffling. And whenever a DSD comes in the track cannot be played without issues. That's quite annoying. How can I circumvent this? Without excluding DSD from playing. It would be no big issue if DSD is played without convolution. No other DSP filter is active.
It is likely that the processor in your Roon Server is not powerful enough to do the convolution on DSD files.
If you look at the signal path in the Roon desktop or remote, you should see a value for processing speed. If this value is ever less than 1.0, then you are working (at least one core) of your processor flat out and it still can’t keep up with the processing that is being asked of it. In practise, the value moves around a bit and instantaneous peak values can be slightly lower than the value displayed so you should aim to keep this value above 1.3 at the very least (higher is better).
(Note: It only shows if the value is less than 100 - if it does not show, then you have no problem).
The image below does not show DSD but it does enough DSP to make the ‘Processing Speed’ indicator show:
To apply the convolution filter, the DSD stream needs to be converted to PCM. If, after the convolution is applied, you are converting back to DSD (using the sigma-delta modulator), you may find that you can improve the situation be enabling “Parallelize Sigma-Delta modulator” in the MUSE/DSP sample conversion settings.
For example, with the source and convolution processing that I showed above, I then enabled conversion to DSD256 and saw the processing speed from from ~60 to ~5:
Subsequently, disabling the parallization of the Sigma-Delta converter reduced the processing speed still further - to ~2.8 - which is still ok - but this processing chain does not include the DSD to PCM conversion that your processing chain will have.
Thanks for your quick reply. Indeed, The resampling filter, though disabled, actually jumps in if set to “only for compatibility”.
In my case enabling/disabling parallel processing doesn’t make a noticeable difference in processing, maybe +0.1. That’s not enough. But disabling native DSD processing did the change. Processing speed went up to 3.4x with DSD64 5.1. That’s acceptable
Thanks again!
And again, I’m still testing different convolution filters . And a question came up regarding proper sampling rate and bit depth for native DSD(64) convolution. Since the filters are always in PCM. And I can’t find any useful hints.
I’m currently only testing 44.1kHz@32bit wav filters. Is there any sampling rate and bit depth for native DSD64 convolution which may bring less load on the processing/CPU or may have other advantages?
Thanks again!
