Mac Mini M2. Latest OS.
Hello! 
I have a question about upsampling with Roon.
What are benefits of upsampling via Roon? My streamer upsamples like many other dac’s / streamers, therefore, at first it seems that there are no benefits.
Or is it just for the dac’s who don’t have upsampling?
Kind regards,
Hi Nick
My newbie understanding is this:
Upsampling in roon happens on the computer and usually comps have more horsepower than a dac. Some dacs have filters that are not applied when you feed them the upsampled file (this can be to your liking or not). Testing maybe you will find that you like roon or the dac to do the upsampling.
That’s my understanding too: replace the DAC’s internal up-sampling with Roon’s, which is supposedly better. Keep in mind however that up-sampling before the DAC only bypasses part of the DAC’s internal up-sampling. For example, the DAC can do two up-samplings: an 8x one, followed by an 8x-32x one during delta-sigma modulation. The latter is not bypass-able. The most common exception is using a DAC that supports native DSD conversion and up-sampling to DSD in Roon.
Whether this makes a difference would depend on the DAC. I believe good ones don’t need such external intervention.
If you have a non oversampling DAC or a DAC where you can disable oversampling then upsampling to the highest res seems to be preffered with DSD being the most popular. For DACs that oversample internally then its up to to you, personally I have heard no improvement at all thats worth using more power for.
Rather than upsample on the fly, you can convert all your files to the higher res, so that no upsampling is required on either side when you play.
That would increase the storage space of local music a few times over, depending on the resolution. Why would you want that? Also, that is not an option when using streaming services.
Why? To get the benefits of upsampling without some of the potential downsides of doing it in real time.
like not having the CPU up for the job? If I may ask what software do you use to do that?
I have a left field use for Roon upsampling:
A system with an older DAC that sounds fine but is susceptible to noise bursts or pops when going from a track at one bit depth or sample rate to another.
Having Roon upsample (or downsample) everything to the same rate solves this.
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