Hello everyone,
I have a fairly powerful NUC with an HDMI output. If I connect it to my Marantz SR -7015 I can see on TV screen how the OS starts incluided in ROCK. What I want is to be able to use that HDMI output to play multi-channel music on the Marantz, is that possible? Apparently NUCLEUS does show its HDMI output as an output for multichannel music and I wanted to know if it is also possible with a NUC.
Thanks for your help.
It is possible with a NUC and I do this, though there are some missing drivers (or issues for the latest NUC 11 & 12 models).
For my NUC10 I see the following after re-installing Rock with the latest release.
This works perfectly into my LG C2 TV and then onto my Sonos ARC, hopefully it will work for you as well.
This was very helpful - thank you. I just bought a NUC11 and have HDMI working using HDA PCH 0 for 2-channel music (which is 98% of my catalog). I did not know the NUC11’s also have HDMI issues. It might explain why my Marantz AV10 and my ROCK on the NUC11 seem to get out of whack at times - possibly HDCP issues? I picked up an SMSL DDC (USB to coax SPDIF) and assigned the coax input to the same as the HDMI input as the ROCK is connected to. Then I grouped both in Roon and set my AV10 for that input to Auto - although I can easily toggle between HDMI and Digital input on the AV10 to compare the two. I was hoping to just use HDMI but so far its been somewhat unreliable on the NCU11. …I suppose its better than not having HDMI HD Audio like the NUC12.
Thomas I wasn’t sure if my response would be useful or not. I only have about 8 multi channel albums out of over 4500 so it’s not something I rushed to set-up but I have to say for multi channel SACD rips it sounds great and I am glad I finally went through it all.
I understand that the issue was related to a driver in Rock, but I cannot remember anymore than that.
Hopefully you can get the reliability of connection sorted or use the converter to give you reliability
Well it prompted me to look as you suggested and there were some Bios updates available to fix HDMI 2.1 issues. My unit was on version 40 and there was a 42, 46 and most current 50 available. So I updated and we’ll see how that goes. Also, I went into the CI settings of the AV10 and changed the HDCP for the HDMI input the Rock is attached to from Auto to HDCP 2.3. I’m perceiving the handshake time is snappier so I’m hoping this too helps. I’m going to dodge the multichannel stuff for now - like you, I don’t have much and when I do, I have my Sony UBP-X1000 to handle that workload.
Thank you very much Michael for your help,
I needed to configure the HDMI 0 device and it worked, although I can only listen to multichannel DSD files if I configure it to convert them to PCM (they are not heard if I activate DoP) although the Marantz SR 7015 is supposed to be able to work with DSD files according to its instructions if I’m not mistaken…
On the other hand, in the Roon panel of devices connected to the NUC, there are 4 more HDMI devices when there is only one physically (as seen in your screenshot), do you know why this is?
Greetings!
It is supposed to mean different output types (e.g. 5.1, 7.1) but I haven’t gotten any to work nor do I have a lot of multichannel content. The stuff I do have I have on SACD or Atmos via AppleTV so I don’t really need it on Roon.
D&M does NOT support DoP. I’ve lobbied for years - they won’t touch it.
These are internal HDMI channels. The only relevant one to use is the HDA Intel PCH HDMI 0 device.
AFAIK, you should be able to use a NUC 11 model for multichannel support - it’s the 12th gen NUCs that have the problem.
Roon doesn’t play DSD files via HDMI as you noted. So DSD is converted to PCM even though your Marantz will play DSD. There is a reason but I forget what it is. I ran into that several years ago and decided to get a Roon Ready MC DAC for MC DSD playback. Hopefully the DSD over HDMI restriction will be resolved at some point.
NUC 11 wasn’t a walk in the park either. I had to upgrade Bios to latest greatest, then re-install ROCK. Seems to be stable now but we’ll see how it goes in coming days. I’m concerned the AV10 and Rock are still having some intermittent handshake issues.
My NUC is a 10i7, I hope it’s powerful enough for multi-channel sound and doesn’t cause problems. I haven’t been able to test it much yet.
You shouldn’t have any problems. My NUC 7i5 has been used with my Denon AVR for multichannel since 2017 very successfully.
I have the NUC8I7BEH/Rock with HDMI to my Denon receiver and as @Geoff_Coupe said it works just fine with hi-res PCM MC files. The only time it runs out of steam is playing DSD 256 MC files via HDMI which requires the conversion to PCM. That drags it down to 1x processing speed and causes problems. The NUC/ROCK playing DSD 256 MC to a roon ready MC dac without any conversion has no issues at all.
Good point - I have three DSD64 multichannel recordings, nothing higher, and these don’t cause any issues
I noticed the issue when Roon Radio began selecting the DSD MC files for followup with the HDMI zone. The double down conversion causes shuddering and skips at 1x.
I’m going to try a few purchases at DSD 128 MC next to see if that would pass through conversion then maybe DSD 64 MC if necessary. Don’t think there is any way to set radio followup to select PCM only so it’s something I have to deal with on occasions.
I’m on the lookout for a Roon server platform replacement with enough power so I don’t need to go down in resolution to avoid the issue with Radio selections.
