I am using gigabit Ethernet. I just signed up for it a couple of months ago. I doing some trouble shooting, coincidentally, contacted Comcast to see about reducing my cable/internet/phone bill. They offered me a pretty good discount which included gigabit Ethernet in exchange for a two year contract. I took it.
This troubleshooting experience has led me to the realization that my pursuit of high resolution, multi-channel DSD is placing me on a collision course with the upper limits of technology capability within my home. It has been abetted by the relatively recent introduction of DSD512 media and reports of DSD1026 demonstrations.
My current “bottleneck” seems to be my server. Once that is relieved (possibly through an upgrade), I will have a look at the rest of the system.
At this point, I think the cabling is least likely to be the next bottleneck. However, I can foresee a future in which there is heavy use of video and audio, separately and coincidentally. I think the cable and the ethernet will serve me well.
I am firmly keeping in mind (some moments less than others), that there is a real upper limit in my ability to appreciate a difference. Given my track record, I am unable to believe that this is knowable without experiencing it.
Your ISP-provided Ethernet is not particularly relevant here as the critical links are between NAS, server and renderer/DAC as well as the routers, switches and cables, all within the house.
Let me suggest three reasons, the last of which is an accident:
Your house was built in about 1995-2002, when Fast Ethernet (= 100 Mbps) was common, but before Gigabit Ethernet was affordable, and so you have long runs of Cat5 (not Cat 5e/6/6a/…) in your walls, and you haven’t had a reason to rewire;
Your house doesn’t have Ethernet in the walls, and you’re using an older Ethernet over power line or MoCA (Ethernet over cable TV coax) solution. In this case, upgrading is usually straightforward.
You think you have gigabit, but have a faulty cable and the devices negotiate down to 100 or even 10 Mbps. This happened to me a couple months ago with a brand new, 3 foot long supposed Cat6 cable. However, two devices both with gigabit Ethernet would only talk at 10 Mbps. It was an inexpensive cable, part of a pack of 5 (so far, the others have worked just fine), so I threw it out.
I’m sure there are other scenarios…
Kal’s reply to the original poster below is exactly correct: it’s not the speed of the Internet connection that matters, but rather the speed the local network (inside the house) is running at, in particular the link between the Roon core and the NADAC. If music is stored on a NAS, then the link between the NAS and Roon core also matters.
Any Core i3/5/7/9/Xeon machine from the last decade capable of running Roon won’t have hardware limitations that will prevent it from playing multichannel DSD256. Software misconfiguration or network
issues are far more likely. I say this on the basis of (too much) education and experience. Of course, purchasing a Nucleus would likely solve a software misconfiguration. If the OP wants to purchase a Nucleus, I know of no reason why one shouldn’t, so go ahead.
Good luck!
PS: In the past, I have had less than optimal experiences with ISP provided routers. YMMV
I am pretty confident that my issue is not due to cabling. All the ethernet cable in the house has been installed in the last couple of years and is at least Cat6 (or higher). Fortunately (or not, depending upon one’s perspective), it is pretty easy for me to run in wall cable. It has also been relatively easy to remove the “old” cable as I have done the work.
I definitely have had experience with #3 above and ended up getting rid of all of it and replacing it with more expensive cable. This was probably 5 years ago.
The clarification about internet connection is a good one. I did not intend to imply that Comcast made my system work better (but it might have happened anyway).
The point that I should have made is that the routers and internet cable are probably not an issue. It appears that I have a gigabit network (at least that is what the Ubiquiti router software indicates), whether I need one or not. Because there are routers between my NAS (where Roon resides) and DAC, as well as the DAC and pre-amp, I have been able to get speeds for each part of the cable run.
My difficulty seems to be with upsampling to DSD256 or, with multi-channel, to DSD128 or DSD256. I have been able to “remedy” this by cutting out several of Roon DSP Engine features.
My current settings for Sample Rate Conversion are:
44.1kHz to 96 kHz – DSD64
176.48kHz to DSD128 – DSD128
DSD256 to DSD 512 – DSD256
Under Sample Rate Conversion Settings, I have the following turned on:
Sample Rate Conversion Filter: Precise, Linear Phase
Sigma-Delta Modulator: 5th Order
SDM Gain Adjustment: -6DB
Parallelize Sigma-Delta Modulator: On
Native DSD Processing: Off
DSD to PCM Filter: (Recommended) 30 MHZ low pass filter
DSD to PCM Gain is 0.0DB
I have also set the resynch delay to 8000ms
With this profile, I have been able to play multi-channel DSP128. I have not attempted multi-channel DSP256.
My question about Nucleus+ is whether it would do any better than what I have. If so, how much better?
Maybe I am not understanding how Roon works in this regard.
I leave the Audeze preset on even when I don’t use headphones, thinking that it doesn’t do anything unless I have the headphones plugged in (which they are usually not).
Does leaving the Audeze processor on impact the performance of the overall system?
Ah, you said the (in this case, non-) magic word: upsampling. Yes, that’s very compute intensive, and I can easily understand a CPU bottleneck. I’m playing a DSD256, 6 channel file as-is: not compute intensive.
I don’t know how well Roon’s upsampling parallelizes, but I’d (semi-educated) guess you’re going to need one physical core per channel, and no, hyperthreads don’t count. I’d recommend at least an 8 core machine, so you have 6 cores doing DSP work, and 2 or more cores to run the rest of Roon.
You might want to look into Signalyst’s HQPlayer, which integrates with Roon, and can use certain NVidia graphics cards for its digital signal processing, I believe including upsampling. You probably will want the computer in a different room than where you listen, as this isn’t going to be low power, so I’d expect a good bit of fan noise.
The exchange on this blog has been very helpful and informative. I now understand how identify the limits of what upsampling can/cannot do for me with my current set-up, which is of considerable benefit. At this point, listening and testing seems like the best next thing to do.
I am also appreciative for the improved comprehension (not to the point of education) about what CPU qualities I need to have for what I want to hear. The quad core CPU my server has is probably responsible for the equipment-based limitations.
Fortunately there appears to be software remedies. Once I get through experimenting with DSD settings, I may look into Signalysts’s HQ Player (after checking my graphics card). I remember reading about it elsewhere on this forum.
My server is located in a part of my house that is very separate from my multi-channel set-ups. That won’t be an issue. Thanks for the head’s up!
WOW! This is so far the only helpful and correct answer on the quest for “Roon Multichannel DSD over HDMI” in different threads in this forum and elsewhere in the internet.
There should be a special place for “the most sought for answers on Roon” putting your posting on top
Hi ddean,
do you use the e38 direct from the nucleus+ via usb ?
The sigma streamer is not necessary for steaming DSD multichannel?
I’ll hope, I can save the money for the sigma streamer.
My Roon core runs on a Microsoft Surface, and I drive the e38 directly from that. Unfortunately, if you’re using a Nucleus (or other Linux-based device), you’ll need an exaSound streamer, as the exaSound DACs use proprietary USB drivers that are available only on Windows and macOS. I knew about this issue before buying the DAC, but still consider it unfortunate…
I use the e38 most of the time but I can suggest an alternative: The Okto DAC8Pro which runs under Linux without any special driver. It should be a good match to the Nucleus+.
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