Native DSD support for Marantz SA-14S1 but not Holo Spring in ROCK, Why? [Fixed]

I came across recently when I plugged into my Marantz SA-14S1, using ROCK, I will able to configure to native DSD playback without any issue. With Holo Spring I’ve no luck but stuck with DoP. I’ve a couple of snap shots below.

Marantz SA-14S1 native DSD playback on ROCK:


Holo Spring DoP DSD playback:

My understanding is native DSD support in Linux for both Marantz SA-14S1 and Holo Spring are listed here:

But it seemed only the Marantz SA-14S1 can work in native DSD and not the recent Holo Spring. Any reasons why?

Hi @MusicEar ---- Thank you for the report and my apologies for the slow response.

Moving forward, in regard to the Holo Spring DAC, I am not sure if we support native DSD playback for that device right now, but I will check for you.

-Eric

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Hi Guy,

Brian has advised that the mainline Linux kernel doesn’t have support for native DSD for the Spring yet. The small number of DACs that are currently supported for native DSD in the “stock” kernel can be seen at the end of this file.

Other DACs (including the Spring) are supported by patches that haven’t yet been merged into the kernel. I believe this is what the mR does. Roon struck some NUC related issues regarding such patches, so they’re not currently in ROCK. Roon intend to revisit this and hope to make it work before the Nucleus launches, but no timeframe has been announced.

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Thanks @andybob, I can see how time consuming is to add a new DAC at a time into the kernel. As there are many users who own Springs, enable native DSD allows us to upsample to DSD512, thus fully utilised this feature.

If Roon can come up a current list of supported native DSD DACs, users will be well informed in advance. Some manufacturers do this, one example is Ropieee.

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Hi Andy

[quote=“andybob, post:6, topic:28489”]
The small number of DACs that are currently supported for native DSD in the “stock” kernel can be seen at the end of this file. [/quote]
Do I understand this list correct, that for once the Amanero of my Lampi DAC is supported for native DSD up to DSD512?
But doesn’t your Holo Spring incorporate xmos and that is also mentioned far down there…?

Hi Christoph,

Just saw your post, apologies for the delay (the @ suffix before a username will flag attention eg: @Christoph).

My above post was passing on some comments from Brian, so I’m talking about something I know very little about (story of my life) !

Anything in the code between the /* … */ brackets is a comment intended to aid humans understand the code but ignored by the compiler. In the XMOS based USB section a number of cases are defined for various DACs based on a USB_ID but the Spring is not among them. This may be why a patch is needed.

The Amanero section doesn’t have comments about particular DACs, maybe the module is more of a stand alone unit with a common implementation. There are a number of cases defined, but I can’t tell what for.

I saw this thread at CA but it looks a little old.

As may now be obvious my proper answer in relation to the Lampi is “don’t know”. If I see anything more up to date I’ll post back here.

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You’re Holo Spring requires a Linux kernel patch. So does your Marantz. However, there is no ‘planned’ work who, when and how such a patch is created and applied. Furthermore, upstream kernel (the “default” Linux kernel) is very slow in accepting these kind of patches.

That’s the reason that a lot of vendors (including me) are patching the kernel themselves and provide an alternative kernel. The Roon team is doing this as well for Rock, but it is a tedious and time consuming process so I can imagine that it takes time.

For the Roon team: as I’m applying all available patches (as posted on https://github.com/lintweaker/xmos-native-dsd) I’ve created a single patch file from this individual patches against a recent 4.9 kernel. It might be easier for you guys to incorporate this single patch in stead of a set of patches. You can find it here: https://github.com/RoPieee/ropieee-kernel/blob/master/usb-dsd-quirks.patch

Regards Harry

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@spockfish

Hi Harry, I am a complete outsider to the world of Linux, but notice your patch has included the Mytek Brooklyn if I am correct.

Will you be kind enough to explain how to add this patch to Rock, which I have just setup using Intel NUC?

Thank you for considering. Cheers. Raymond

hi @Raymond_Ho,

That’s something you can not do yourself. ROCK is an appliance, that happens to use the Linux kernel. Patching it is far from trivial and can only be done by the Roon team.

Regards,

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got it, thanks, hoping someone at Roon could look into this. Cheers.

I’ve applied @spockfish’s patch to ROCK – they went in cleanly. Thanks! You’ve saved me a ton of time, which I hugely appreciate.

Doing some testing now… will push this build out soon if all is good.

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ok, its out!

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@danny: How do we as the end ROCK users see that an updated ROCK version is out?

Settings -> About in Roon. Or wait and it’ll tell you eventually.

Confirm ROCK updated and native DSD support for Mytek Brooklyn in place, awesome guys!

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Awesome guys, thanks to Roon teams and @spockfish for the patch, now my Spring DAC can do up to DSD512 without any issues! :slight_smile:

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5 posts were split to a new topic: Attaching Nucleus+ via HDMI to Receiver, not getting all resolutions