I run Roon on a Mac mini, into a Lumin U1 (then directly into my DAC then Power Amp, without pre-Amp), and configured the Roon Volume Control on the Lumin U1 as “Device Volume” to set volume with Lumin’s Leedh Processing implementation. When I check the signal path (which is otherwise qualified “Lossless”), it is now qualified as “High Quality”.
Would love to understand why? When Roon is configured to perform some Volume Leveling, it qualifies the signal to “Enhanced”? Why not do the same for Lumin’s Leedh Processing volume leveling?
Thank you and understand that it is “correct” and does not affect the output.
What I don’t understand is why then Roon’s volume leveling is qualified as “Enhanced”, just because it is internal to their software as opposed to Lumin’s which is external.
It implies that their internal digital volume leveling is “better” than the Leedh Processing algorithm, which would be surprising to me (but of course I do not know)?
So I would prefer that the qualification of the signal path be based on the true quality of the sound leveling and not simply external vs internal.
I expend a lot of effort to protect the quality of my signal path and having Roon ding me because I am using an external sound leveling bothers me, especially as you suggest if it does not affect lossless quality…
Thank you for confirming. This is what is stated in the Roon online manual.
However, my question was to try to understand why it is the case, since the Lumin Leedh Processing volume algorithm does not affect the output (and may actually be better than the internal Roon volume algorithm)?
Can you point me to the right representative at Roon to try to get their philosophy / rationale?
When I first got my D2, I also noticed that with Leedh turned on, the Roon signal path suggested the output was no longer lossless, hence the description changing from “lossless” to “high quality.” I left it like that for three years and never thought about it, but now I’m learning what Leedh is and why it’s there and seeing that @wklie confirmed the analog output is still lossless, I turned it back on. I have the configuration in the attached pic.
I suspect Roon won’t label it as lossless because Leedh is a proprietary tech and they don’t know what it’s doing to the signal, so they won’t guarantee that it’s bit perfect, but if that were the case, couldn’t you say the same about MQA? Roon does leave MQA as lossless.
Side tangent: I have power amps that have a fixed gain of 30dB, which I am now learning is way above average. So I’ve turned the D2 to low gain and changed Roon volume leveling up to -14 LUFS from -20LUFS. I suppose the less gain you have to add through the signal path, the less distortion there will be, and this configuration, with having Leedh back on, sounds really good. I’ve also recently added absorption panels to my room and got lower gauge speaker cables. In conclusion, if this hobby is all about tinkering and finding what sounds best, then it’s never too late to make improvements to your system!
Thank you; after reading the paper, it seems I may have been better off with the DAC on high gain and Roon at -20 LUFS. As you said, though, either way it’s below the amp’s noise floor. At least I feel better about having the DAC connected to the power amps (“DACs normally outperform power amplifiers regarding the noise floor so there is no reason why they should not be directly connected to the power amplifier”)
