I am looking for a low cost based DSD CAPABLE Roon bridge. (under £500 - e.g. based on RaspberryPi)
I have an Auralic G1 driving my Chord Dave in my main room,(Absolutely STUNNING performance) but I have two other systems in the house (much cheaper systems ) and want to be able to “Roon enable” each system. I’m obviously not expecting anything like the performance level of the G1/DAVE combo.
I would just buy 2 Auralic Aeries Mini’s but in their wisdom Auralic have deliberately not enabled Roon on this?
At least half of my music is DSD - I have LOTS of classical - so please don’t reply with PCM only solutions as I am not at all interested in those nor any arguments about PCM vs DSD - I’ve read, all that and carried out extensive tests over more than a decade. My collection is 99% DSD 64 I don’t really need DSD 128 or 256.
The Dacs I have in these other rooms are the Chord Qutest and Teac 501. I currently use Macs to drive them.
From what I have read about Raspberry Pi add ons e.g. HifIBerry - they don’t support DSD and the Roon server will have to output PCM to it, which I don’t want. Chromecast the same.
Has anyone else managed to build or find anything that can do this without the usual audiophile price tag?
I’m using 4 RoPieee powered RPi endpoints: 2 Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital’s, Allo Boss and Meridian Explorer 2. Also 3 BluOS endpoints: NAD T777v3, Bluesound Node 2 and Bluesound Pulse Soundbar. Happy Roon user.
If you want a device that does not share a controller between ethernet and USB, go for an Odroid C2.
I have several of them in service, using dietpi / roon bridge. I haven’t tried DSD512, but DSD256 works without any issues.
It’s £600 so slightly more than the £500 limit, but have a look at the Pro-ject Stream Box S2 Ultra. I’ve just checked the specs and it goes to DSD256.
I’ve got one in for review and have just fired it up - last night. Early days but sounding very nice so far - a step up from my Allo USBridge and Digiones (as it should be for the price).
Roon DSP can upsample to DSD512 on the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital. See the pics above.
I’m happy with the SQ on my Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital setups:
S.M.S.L SA-98E amp with Dali Opticon 8 speakers
Aune X7s class A headphone amp with MrSpeakers ETHER C Flow headphones on XLR balanced
I just used it to keep the RPi in place.
Today the SMSL amp has been replaced by a refurbished vintage Technics SU-8600 and the RPi is powered by a PoE hat and it lives in the Technics Rack, and I added a miniDSP DDRC-24 with Dirac Live.