In my system, Roon is running on an Intel NUC running ROCK with a fast i7 chip and tons of memory. I’m sending multichannel audio files to an Altitude 32. Multichannel PCM works flawlessly, but when I try to send DSD multichannel files, the track appears to play but I only get dead silence. Here’s what Roon is sending to my unit.
This should work, right? Is there some setting in Roon or the Trinnov that I need to change?
OK, I did a little digging and when I changed the setting for max resolution tp 96Hz, it works perfectly. The Altitude is new and I hadn’t tried playing any file at a higher resolution than 96/24 before. I just discovered that I have the same problem trying to play a 192/24 PCM file. This is a Roon Ready device reporting that it can play 192/24 PCM (which agrees with the official specs for the Altitude 32). So the Altitude should play these files at greater than 96KHz, but it doesn’t. What’s wrong?
Keep in mind, what rates that are listed as Input Rates are what the device can accept as an input; and can be different than what it actually processes at. For example, Chord DACs can accept a DSD input, but, immediately converts it to PCM to process. Most Room Correction systems process at set rates ( aka Dirac). The Trinnov seems to be able to process the signal natively at 44.1k, 48k, 88.2k, or 96k; or that is my read on the research I have done.
I always call (or email) the company’s tech support line directly to ask such questions. In this case, I would ask them to give me a walkthrough of how the Altitude processes the incoming signal and at what rates.
