Quad Vena II - No Native DSD option available

Audio Gear Talk
1

Hi.

I’ve recently got my hands on a Quad Vena II (2) for my home office.

My signal chain is simple:

MacMini (M1) → USB2 → Quad USB input → Linn 109s.

I was surprised to see that no DSD option is available to me in the configuration of Quad?

I’d be very grateful if others on this group who have a similar setup could help me figure out why no native DSD is available to me and how I can correct it.

Thanks in advance.

2

I don’t have a Vena - but to get DSD working on my USB dac I needed to make sure all roon DSP (including the DSP volume control) were turned off.

The DSD options then appeared.

3

Thanks for the reply, @GregD . I have no DSP setup at all within Roon on this setup. But, I went in and removed any and all DSP filters from the device, volume is set to device control, and the only thing “on” is “Exclusive mode”.

Still no “Native DSD” available in DSD playback strategy. And I’ve rebooted/restarted a few times, including the Quad.

I wonder what the issue might be?

Would welcome any additional suggestions/pointers.

Thanks in advance.

Roland.

4

I have a Quad Va-One+, and have had a similar issue. I think the issue may be with your Mac. does it support DSD output?

5

Thanks @woodford . I think I need to check!

So, I did a bit more Googling, and came across this: Native DSD playback strategy not available on macOS

“macOS CoreAudio does not support native DSD playback; it’s as simple as that.”

And as some have said: That sucks!

So looks like I need to bring an old Pi back up as a Roon endpoint and plug that in via USB.

Shame…

Thanks for the feedback, though.

1 Like
6

But also the RPi will not really help, if you want native DSD and not DoP.

7

That’s not entirely correct. RoPieee’s kernel has a patch for native DSD on the Vena.
Potentially that could work for the II as well. And if the USB implementation is the same I suspect we can get it to work.

Thanks

1 Like
8

Ok, I’d to write: Will not help in every case and using a RPi means not automatically to use Ropieee…