Nucleus, distorted/harsh multichannel sound, HDMI

Back in November 2020, I bought an Nucleus for replacing the Meridian Sooloos system in my house.

The main reason for buying it was due too support for playing multichannel SACD and DVD-Audio files from the internal SSD disk out via the HDMI port.

I have many hundreds albums of ripped SACD and DVD-Audio disc in DSF and WAV format, stereo and multichannel.

First issue that occured was the sound quality were not very good. Specially when playing DSD files, Roon converts to PCM since the HDMI switch does not support DSD input signal. Sometimes the channel layout out to my speakers when playing is totally wrong.

By converting SACD files to FLAC format, this seems to solve the issue and the Roon support team never replied back to me in below thread:

Link

I’ve now converted all my SACD albums to FLAC. Playing SACD and DVD-A is now without the channel layout issue now. The HDMI output from Roon is also set to 5.1, so the processor convert 5.1 to 7.1 and not Roon.

But until few weeks ago, I discovered another issue and from what I discovered from day one. I’ve copied my DSD and DVD-A folder from Roon SSD drive to an external harddrive. DSD folder in .DSF file format, not FLAC.

Then I connected the harddrive to my Sony UBP-X800 M2 blu ray player to the same HDMI switch that the Nucleus is connected to.

The result? Well, the anwer is that the sound sounds distorted/harsh via the Nucleus than via the Sony player, no matter if it’s SACD or DVD-A files. Keep in mind that the Sony also convert DSD to PCM 88.2kHz during playback.

My conclusion and from what I hear is that the Sony player sound quality is overall a better listening experience for multichannel sound.

Nucleus is basic an PC/Intel NUC and I suspect there is to much jitter/digital noise from the Nucleus. The unit is not audiophile enough to use as an multichannel music player with the HDMI connection probably.

I’ve read that many people says it sounds great with HDMI output, but in my system, I cannot recommend the Nucleus at this stage. Until Roon Labs can prove the opposite?

Equipment:

Meridian 861v8 surround processor
Meridian HD621 HDMI switch
Nucleus
Sony UBP-X800 M2

Connection between the surround processor and HDMI switch is MMHR cable. Basical an Cat.6a cable that carries Meridian propreritray multichannel sound.

4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Nucleus and Multichannel ouput via HDMI issue