Need help building a Mock for upsampling 44K to DSD512, M1 maybe?

Tinkering
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I had a sonictransporter I5 which allowed me to upsample everything I threw at to DSD256 with ease. Since my DAC supports DSD512, I bought a NUC8i7BEH and installed ROCK it. It played for awhile upsampling 44K tracks to DSD512, then it started to stutter. Processing speeds were at 1.5 to 2.3x. Found the same stuttering issues on the exact same track both on Tidal, and also from the internal SSD. Everything is hardwired, ruled out the obvious issues. Just don’t think a NUC is up to the task, hence this post

So my question is if I go do the MOCK path, what is proven to work with upsampling within ROON at minimum, 44K to DSD512 without filters? Can I simply take my m2 drive out of the NUC and install it on a MOBO and be up and running or is it more complicated than this? Any guidance would be appreciated. Considering both fanless and regular chassis for the build

Would something like this work?

HDPLex H3V3 with 200w power supply, $383
ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E MOBO $279
I9-9900K $373
DDR4 3600 32GB $180
m2 drive $60
1TB SSD $99

I saw some posts that an M1 may be able to do what I want. Maybe I should order one and try it out for 14 days??

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Well, keep in mind that ROCK only contains the drivers necessary for the NUC hardware and you cannot load anything onto it. If the point is to build something faster/better to get to DSD 512, especially with the hardware your listing, then use Linux or Windows.

2 Likes
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I’ll not draw this conclusion at this point. In the past, normally above 1.3 you should be fine. However, I don’t know whether recent changes to Roon Core would significantly affect this.

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Background audio analysis was happening at the same time as music playback?

If so, can you turn it off and report your processing speed.

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Nothing was running. Even turning off all analysis, same issue. Processing speed is at 2.3x

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Processing speed is constant at 2.3x and you still have stuttering issues?

Can you show your signal path (screenshot)

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Are you doing any other DSP like volume leveling, convolution, etc. Anything in addition to the upsampling?

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Volume leveling and headroom were on…

Turned them both off, same issue. Processing speed is at 2.1

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I just tried my Dell XPS 15 laptop ( i7-6700HQ 2.6 GHZ 8mb) as the core to make certain it wasn’t my DAC or Ultra Rendu posing the problem.

Upsampling 44k to DSD512 worked perfectly. Is it safe to safe this NUC is not up to the task? Processing speed with the laptop was 1.3x

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-6700HQ-vs-Intel-i7-8559U/2586vs3302

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Doesn’t your test shows the opposite. The Laptop with the lesser processor was not having issues. So, that indicates that something else is in the mix. Your laptop is running Windows right? Maybe it is an OS difference.

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I guess it could be but seeing I followed Roon’s supported NUC protocol, I would have assumed the opposite.

There are several others on Headfi using this LKS DAC running Linux/Roon so I am fairly confident it’s not a Windows thing. Maybe my DAC doesn’t like the NUC, don’t know. Maybe it’s a combo of the Rendu? The other user on headfi is using a Singxer Su6 instead. As suggested, many variables, who knows for sure. Would be nice if someone else chimed in and said they were able to upsample to 512 with this NUC, that would help maybe someone else.