So I recently did a software update from IOS 16.I don’t remember tbh but it’s past the point where Flac is supported to IOS 18.3.1, But when I opened Roon and played a song the signal path was displayed as “High Quality” instead of Lossless. I did a bit of digging and found that there was a difference between the two with High Quality being stupid garbage and Lossless being very cool. So I would like some help with fixing this issue so I can listen to my music again without worrying about sound quality.
Oh yeah btw when I dug into the Lossless vs High Quality thing I didn’t just search it up without specifying that I was searching for Roon related answers (infact I found it while trying to find out how to fix it on this very website).
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Please share a screenshot of the signal path. Thanks.
In my experience, high-quality refers to no less than 16/44.1
As @mjw asks, a screenshot of the signal path will help identify where the HQ is coming from and why.
Most likely you will have to find and enable the output device which allows you a way to set “Exclusive mode” in Roon. This is found under Settings-Audio--Advanced, “eller Inställningar-Ljud-På denna Mac-Avancerat”
But, can you hear the difference between “stupid garbage” and “very cool”?
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Unless you have a DAC plugged into your iOS device Roon seems to re-sample to 48Khz. There is no option to choose 44.1Khz on my iPhone.
This is correct. The iPhone uses the system mixer and downsamples to 48 kHz. Therefore, Roon does this on the server using 64-bit precision.
However, connecting a USB DAC, not a cable dongle, will pass bit-perfect to the DAC, up to it’s specified bit depth and sample rate.
@Henrik_Falck, you may like to read the following help guide.
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Other forum users may not understand such technical terminology.
AJ
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Okay a bit of update here. So it turns out all of my other music on Roon actually comes up as Lossless with it only coming up as “high quality” for songs in 32-bit, So now it’s more how to fix that issue instead. Btw yes I HAVE checked my audio settings to see if I can set the max bitrate higher but I couldn’t. I’ll see if I can post a screenshot of them settings in the morning but it’s 3:00am and I need to sleep right now so yeah. Sorry that I didn’t even check my other files to see if they displayed “lossless”, that was a bit dumb of me. (Another thing to mention is me being on an iPad the whole time [please don’t make fun of me]), I was stuck in writers block (or something like this that) for like an hour and kind of just gave up by the end In a way, so that’s why I left these two things out. So yeah, bit of an update.
Again, please post the signal path, as this explains what’s happening. However, in this instance, I suspect Roon is converting 32-bit to 24-bit because your device can’t handle 32-bit.
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Here it is (as well as the device settings)
Funny (not really) that I didn’t notice half the answer being right there lol
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The only thing wrong there is that you’re playing a 32bit audio file, these are normally only used in DAWs, and your iDevice is not one of those.
And, your iDevice is neither an MQA Decoder or Renderer, you should chose No MQA Support (but keep MQA Decoder under Advanced active)
Unless you have an external DAC connected?
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Lossless equals bit-perfect. Trying to play a 32-bit source file to a device that seems to support only 24-bits requires “loosing” 8-bits in the process so it is no longer lossless/bit-perfect (bits missing).
Is this case an issue for consumers? As more bits is equal to more dynamic range and none of the releases I’m aware of even make use of the 16-bits defined for audio compact discs, I don’t think you will hear any difference at all as the lost bits are unsignificant and don’t touch the encoded music at all.
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re 32 bit: yeah, i’ve only ever seen this in my DAW (digital performer) as an option, and this is presumably floating point, and is there for signal processing. For export, 24 or 16 bit are fixed point. All my DAC’s (or for that matter my ADC’s) have only ever been 24 bit max, and i never did use 1-bit DSD
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The iPad doesn’t support 32 bit, so it will downsample to 24 bit.
Roon is honest to a fault about that process not being 100% lossless, however I challenge you to hear any impact of such a downsampling.
It’s inconsequential. Enjoy the music.
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Hi Henrik,
welcome to the community.
Interesting question, thank you for bringing that up.
Stay hifi,
Dolor