I use roon volume with Yamaha. But I do not understand how it works 
In rest always used Dac volume (knob) until I did bought a preamp (WITH remote)
If your DAC or amplifier is doing DSP volume control, it doesn’t affect the color coding or labeling in Roon. So don’t get too much emphasis on such.
Or use both software (Roon and/or HQPlayer) in the optimized way I described. You minimize the noise and distortion from the preamp, with convenience of Roon controlled volume and without risk of accidental full volume surprises.
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I’m not worried about using the preamp volume or dac volume. I just don’t like using the roon dsp volume because I thought it was the worst option in terms of quality due to the green dot. But you were saying earlier that roon dsp volume was better than using dac or preamp volume. Or did I read that wrong?
He pops up every few months to go on an anti-DSD crusade 
And the old discussions come up again and go round and round in circles
And my point is that colors of these dots are not indicative of final output quality.
You could also have some nice shiny dot color with MQA content going to the DAC, while getting all lossy mid-fi content.
It doesn’t take into account things happening outside of Roon. It cannot even know what kind of volume control you are having outside.
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DSD is 1-bit PCM. That’s what makes it possible to do DSP in native DSD.
It is PWM. And well, I don’t handle it like PCM. But each to their own. I don’t really care how you handle it in your DSP implementations (if such even exist).
There is no “density” because there are no A/D or D/A converters that would switch state between adjacent bits of same value. You can call it PDM (pulse-duration modulation (PDM)) as well, as referred to on the PWM page I referenced to.
Both terms (and pages) refer to each other though since both are essentially about the same thing.
There is density if you think about each sample as an analog Dirac impulse - which is the first theoretical step in the D/A conversion.
So each bit represents a well defined signal level, as in PCM, so we can call it PCM as well.
No, running combination of bits form pulses of varying width in response to input signal amplitude.
Single bit doesn’t represent anything.
(P.S. Modulator in ESS Sabre also outputs one bit a time)
You can certainly combine bits (e.g. to make transitions less steep), but you don’t have to. You can have two voltage rails +V and -V and output +V for a 1 and -V for a zero, then apply an analog low-pass filter and you’d get a perfectly accurate analog reproduction.
PWM (subset of PDM) and PDM are not PCM…
Why is it that volume control using hqplayer shows a blue dot, and Roon dsp volume shows a green dot?
Is the software volume control in hqplayer lossless and therefore better than roon dsp volume?
colours are only showing what roon knows. But roon does not know things after the signal left his domain.
I do not use one of the other. For the moment I’m happy with my preamp controlling the volume. But I can try, I do not thing I’m going to hear much of a difference. But if I would have to choose I would use HQP.
This is good read if you’re worried about Roon’s DSP volume control. I’m sure there’s even less to worry about with HQP’s volume control.
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Thanks I did not know about this article (not that I follow too closely asr)
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In my case, I’ve tried the different methods for volume control. I don’t hear any difference so I continue to use my preamp control. (Luxman integrated amp).
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Would a preamp with a relay-stepped attenuator be the best of all?
From my little understanding up to this moment: Volume control thru a good preamp might be as good as computed volume. So if you do not have a preamp or you do not need a preamp use the dsp volume. I can think only of one case when you would want a preamp, if you are using multiple sources (or a second one but not really about the SQ, you just like a preamp as convenience/setup/looks).