Currently in trial mode on a mac mini and I have a couple of issues.
Firstly if I try and bypass Roon’s internal volume control and use that on the DAC, which is my preference, no matter how the initial volume level is set on the Exasound, at the start of any playback or at the change of a track/album, Roon automatically sets my dac to its maximum volume level. No other software player I have does this, when the internal software volume control is bypassed. Why does Roon have to alter my dac? So I can’t use this.
Secondly, the exasound has 2 modes, 2 channel & 8 channel and is quite happy playing back stereo in 8 channel mode as the the other 6 just have no signal. So following the manufacturers advice, I just leave it set in 8 channel mode all the time. Except Roon insists on switching it to 2 channel mode, the dac doesn’t need it too. I have to go back into Audio Midi Setup after using Roon and switch it back again.
The second is just plain annoying, but the first is disastrous. Can anything be done about it?
Hey @weedos – sorry for the trouble. To be clear, Roon has no internal volume control, as described here. If you’re hoping to use your DACs volume control, the controls in Roon should do that. This of course is subject to how you have your output setup in Roon, and how your DACs drivers work.
Can you let us know how you have the DAC configured? A screenshot of your settings like the one at the bottom of this post would be best. Also, if you can include the details of your setup listed on that page, we can look into what’s going on here.
Thanks Paul – looking forward to getting this worked out for you!
What Roon is doing is setting the hardware output format of your device to match the software format of the content being played. If we didn’t make this system call, you wouldn’t necessarily get bit-perfect output. This is the same operation that causes the bit-depth to change to the correct value at a hardware level.
I would expect 8ch software to do the corresponding change before sending 8ch content.
Our testing with competitive software has indicated that changing the hardware output format to match the source material is a common practice when attempting bit-perfect output on mac, and it is in fact a requirement for obtaining bit-perfect output on some devices.
Can you elaborate a little bit more on specific problems this is causing (other than the fact that you noticed the change in audio midi setup)? Is there another software package that this is breaking as a result of what we’re doing here?
@mike - I think I get it now, it was my misunderstanding of what fixed volume meant and an assumption that Roon had internal volume controls, which could be by-passed.
So do I have this correct? The Roon software doesn’t itself alter the level of the output signal going to the DAC under any circumstances, all the volume control does is attempt to replicate in software the volume controls on the dac, if it has one. The success of this is down to the implementation of the DAC’s driver software. Consequently if “Fixed volume” is set, Roon will set the volume control on the DAC to maximum, to maximise the integrity of the signal going to the next component in the chain and assumes that there is a volume control further down the line, beyond the DAC. This was where I went wrong as I thought from your description of the check box, that the DAC was considered to be an “hardware volume control elsewhere.”
When not in Fixed volume mode, the Roon volume control does indeed alter the volume level displayed on the DAC, but the communication is only one way as changing the volume on the DAC with a remote doesn’t change the volume level shown in Roon.
@Brian – The Mac mini is also used for playing video and TV as well as music. I know Roon does not yet do multichannel audio, but it will soon I hope and so in the meantime I have to use other players for multichannel audio. I can use either JRiver, Audiravana+ and Decibel (Coz it uses the mac ASIO drivers for playback) all do not force the DAC/Audio midi setup into 2 channel mode when playing back stereo, they are quite happy to just fill 2 of the 8 available channels and leave the others silent. So from a user perspective nothing has to be done to switch from stereo to multichannel audio. Whether or not they should is another matter, but there is no problem. They do all change the bit rate, sample rate and format as appropriate for the content about to be played as expected.
JRiver is also used for watching movies & TV shows most of which are multichannel. The advantage of JRiver, prior to Roon’s release, was that all the audio and video was together in 1 easy to use software package and no fiddling was required to switch between them, which is good for others in the house, who just want to press play and it starts.
So do I have this correct? The Roon software doesn’t itself alter the level of the output signal going to the DAC under any circumstances,
It doesn’t alter the level of the output signal going to CoreAudio. In exclusive mode, that pretty much means the same thing as “to the DAC” but in shared mode, it means “to the OS mixer” which may implement volume control using software gain, or may use hardware-based mixing facilities (we are unable to tell the difference). This is part of why most quality-conscious people choose exclusive mode.
all the volume control does is attempt to replicate in software the volume controls on the dac, if it has one. The success of this is down to the implementation of the DAC’s driver software.
Yes, and to some extent, the competence of the OS developers.
The OS-level facilities for managing volume control on Windows are about a decade ahead of where they are on Mac at the moment–that’s what enables Windows to have that neat multi-device/multi-app mixer that stays in perfect sync with the Roon volume slider 100% of the time. Mac doesn’t provide that same level of power to us.
Consequently if “Fixed volume” is set, Roon will set the volume control on the DAC to maximum, to maximise the integrity of the signal going to the next component in the chain and assumes that there is a volume control further down the line, beyond the DAC. This was where I went wrong as I thought from your description of the check box, that the DAC was considered to be an “hardware volume control elsewhere.”
We are are renaming “Fixed Volume” to “Force Maximum Volume” to make it more clear what it does, and adding another setting: “Disable Volume”, which does the thing I think you expected: tells Roon to just do nothing with volume at all.
The descriptive text has been revised as well.
These changes will go out in our upcoming 1.1 release.