microrendu/Cambridge 200m no native dsd?

If I set the microrendu to “Native DSD” Roon converts it to PCM. The only way I can play DSD is to select “DoP” on the microrendu. I’m not using any volume leveling or dsp volume and crossfade is set to 0.


Moved from #uncategorized to #roon

I use a Mytek DAC with a microRendu and get Native DSD using the same microRendu and Zone settings as you.
The only difference I’m seeing is that my DAC is not identified by Roon.
So I identified my DAC as the 200M thinking perhaps Roon had incorrectly configured the 200M as not having native DSD.
But I still get Native DSD

I see that the 200M supports Native DSD AND DoP

Is there a setting in the 200M you need to change?
Or perhaps you’ve inadvertently enabled some DSP in Roon?

Thanks. DSP is not enabled. This is odd.

For 200M to get native in other os than windows I think there are patches (or hoe that are called)

this is what jussi said

this is Wklie, Peter Lie about 200M

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Ok. So the dac (which has a huge volume knob) has no volume control in Roon nor the ability to do native dsd (even though their specs say it does). Cambridge advertises the dac as Roon tested after they “mistakenly” advertised it as Roon ready. It is clearly not Roon anything. My $60 monoprice usb dac has roon volume control.
I called Cambridge for 2 weeks. They never answered the phone and have not returned any of my messages.
I will probably return the dac and steer clear of Cambridge in the future. What a shame.

It does native DSD. But that depends on what it is plugged in to. You will get DSD in Windows but Linux will default to DOP. You need to speak to Sonore about patching their software to enable Native DSD for this DAC if you want to keep the 200M. Also remember that DOP is just DSD with PCM encapsulation to sneak it past the front door of the unpatched operating system. It shouldn’t sound any different to pure DSD. But I won’t deny that it feels good to see DSD in the signal path.

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Roon tested does not mean hardware volume control will work it depends on how the manufacturer implements the volume and if it’s available to control the hardware volume over USB or not. DSD would not support any type of digital volume control as its DSP and would break the bitstream it needs to be fixed volume for DSD to work at all.

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Cambridge should state that in their specs.
Would a different streamer/endpoint solve these 2 issues?
Or switch the dac to an aeres2?

I have a Zen Stream, no 512 just 256 and 128DoP
I did not try the volume as I use the preamp.

There are two issues.

  1. Does it work in Linux?
  2. Is the kernel used in the MicroRendu patched to make use of that.
    The answer to 1 has to come from CA.
    The answer to 2 has to come from Sonore.
    If the answer comes back from 1 positive then other streamers may work with your MicroRendu.
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Would need a look. And it also depends on Linux kernel version. For example I recently enabled native DSD support for Accuphase’s DAC-60 card (and their standalone converters) in Linux. Not hard, but won’t work out of the box either.

Usually these companies don’t implement their USB interfaces on their own. They just buy the implementation from someone. Once we know who’s implementation it is, we also know what level of support we can have.

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Generally yes, but since it has 33 - 50% overhead, DoP’s biggest impact is typically limiting the maximum DSD rate you can do. Not always though, like with RME’s ADI-2 where the device is always DoP and you get full capabilities on all platforms. But it will put a hard cap on maximum DSD rates.

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Zen Stream is max DSD128 over DoP. And DSD256 with native DSD. Because it’s PCM is limited to 352.8/384k which means maximum DSD128 wit DoP.

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Only If I would have a NAA to support 512, than the only way I can think to find the usb implementation is to open the dac :slight_smile:

Oh yes I have to edit the post… no 512, native 256 and 126 Dop. I was writing slower than my ideas

Doing a bit of search on DDG resulted in this:

Looks like XMOS. Should work out of the box with kernels >= 5.15. (for example my RPi4 NAA OS image and generic x64 NAA OS image)

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wow, thanks for taking the time… If not intona than RPI4, depends on the next month bonus :slight_smile: