Roon/Core on PC, Roon on Laptop out to a DAC. Which one is doing the Upsampling?

Everything is working properly. I upsample to DSD256 and output to my DAC with no issues.

When the laptop starts up it connects to the Roon Core on the PC.

If I browse the Internet on my laptop though, or other processing, I get occasional sound glitches/drop outs. Is the Roon Core/PC performing the upsampling or the laptop? I presume it’s the PC, but the DSD256 signal still must demand a lot of processing on the laptop?

I’ve attached the signal path displayed on the laptop.

Any upsampling is done on the machine where the core or Roon Server resides. the 1.5 processing speed is very low and means you are running out of CPU on that machine. Any additional demands on that machine at all will start to cause drop outs etc.

How is the ref indeed your network configured? Are you using wifi at all? Is you DAC connected to the laptop you are running the remote on?

Good to know the 1.5 processing speed is low. I’ll take a look at optimizing that machine, or maybe even replacing it. The drop-outs appear to occur on the laptop though - for example when browsing the Web.

Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000 router. PC is connected via ethernet to the router. Laptop uses wifi over the 5Ghz band. Yes the DAC is connected to the laptop that I am running the remote on.

Wifi at high bitrates might not cut it

Is there anyway you can connect the laptop to the router via Ethernet to test if it is the wifi or not?

The laptop plays the upsampled files with absolutely no problem - as long as I don’t try and do something else resource intensive - such as browsing the web. Perhaps the additional traffic over wifi causes the problems.

Unfortunately the DAC is in another room and floor separate to the router. I’m also looking at a dedicated ROCK based computer or something similar for dedicated music playback.