Problem with playing beginnings of DSD files

Playing FLAC24/16 bit is ok, MP3 is ok. Only DSD 64/128/256 has a problem at the beginning there is a crackle. But only when we start playback from the blue arrow from the beginning. As the next track played there is no crackle. You can see it clearly in the video.

DSD problem

Hey @Wojciech_Jedynak,

Thanks for sharing your report and the video!

Based on the video, I belive the sound you;re hearing is likely due to the file format change occurring (unless you’re playing the same format across all the songs, it’s difficult to tell from the video) between tracks during playback.

Have you tested out using the resync delay function? This setting allows Roon to insert a brief silence before starting a new stream, giving your DAC sufficient time to process the audio signal properly. You can start with a 500ms delay and gradually increase as needed.

Let me know if this helps! :raised_hands:

Hi. Thank you very much for your quick reply.
This audible crackling is only present before the start of DSD file playback. When playing other files, such as FLAC 16/24 bit, etc., this crackling does not occur.

The crackling appeared only 2-3 days ago. Before that, everything worked properly. There was never a problem.

I’ll try to check tomorrow.

You can also change your DSD Playback Strategy to “DoP” and see if that helps.

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I changed the DSD playback method setting from “Native” to “DSD via PCM v1.0(Dop)” and the crackling at the beginning disappeared. Now playback is correct. DSD 64/128 and 256 all play fine :wink:
But why is that, since I didn’t change any settings, I always had it set to “native” and it was fine. Everything changed about a week ago… Windows 10 wasn’t updated in that time either. Is the current setting (Dop) good for playing DSD correctly? What changes does changing to “Dop” bring to the playback? Does it lose quality in any way?

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Unfortunately this delay setting didn’t help, I tried from the shortest to the very long one. Only changing from “Native” to “Dop” gave a positive result and now everything is fine.

Nope it doesn’t lose quality in any way. The only downside of DoP is that it doubles the size of the data being sent to your DAC, using more network bandwidth as well. As a consequence, it halves the top bitrate your DAC can handle. So for instance, if your DAC can handle DSD512 natively as a top bitrate, you could only send DSD256 over DoP to your DAC, leaving you to suffer pops and clicks during the start of native DSD512 playback.

I’m putting this really simply, but the reason you hear the clicks is because of the way your DAC is audibly processing the initial bits of data before it has time to fully get into the right clock mode for the song you are playing. In many DACs (like some I have had), you will hear this at the end of a track rather than the beginning.

Putting this very simply again, in all cases, encapsulating the DSD stream in a PCM stream (which is like putting a letter in an envelope - the letter is still the letter, i.e., pure DSD, once taken out of the envelope), mitigates the issue of the DAC having to adjust to the data stream timing.

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Thank you very much for the explanation. Now everything is clear. Thanks again for solving my problem.
I remember that when I had Win 7 before and installed Roon, there was no such problem. There were no crackles and it was set to “Native”. But after installing a new Win 10 and also setting it to “native” in Roon, this problem with crackles appeared. This is very strange…

We’re glad Roon is working for you again!

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