Zen DAC only displays green and magenta

Roon Core Machine

Mac book air, big sur

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Virgin media, wired

Connected Audio Devices

Ifi Zen DAC

Number of Tracks in Library

3,000

Description of Issue

Not sure this is a Roon issue, but I’m not getting much help from ifi, so was hoping there is a knowledgeable person out there in the community who may be able to help. My Zen DAC is connected to my Mac Air via USB. I have both Tidal and Qobuz.

The problem is my DAC is only displaying either green or magenta (nothing in between) I have played tracks that are studio quality and therefore should display as blue, but they display as magenta (see screen shot).

I have tried changing my audio settings on both Tidal and Roon to every possible combination, but without success. I have also tried both cookies and cream and limoncello. Any help would be appreciated.

I also have a Hip DAC, which has the same issue.

Hi @Trevor_Penny,

When playing a MQA track, Roon is decoding the MQA to x2 rate and the Zen is reporting back to Roon that is using its MQA renderer. All looks good to me.

Note: Roon considered MQA decoding as a signal enhancement (it’s no longer the original bit perfect stream, but it’s correct / as expected).

What happens when you play a non-MQA track, can you share another signal path image please.

Hi Carl,

Thanks for the quick response, I have attached a signal path for a tidal flac 44.1 kHz track, which displays as green on the dac. It’s good to know that everything is working fine. The reason I have flagged it is because I was watching a review on YouTube for the zen dac and the guy was connecting it to an iPad and showing how the colours changed on the varying files that he played. So for example he played a file that was studio and it displayed as blue (as per the instructions that come with the dac.

Hey @Trevor_Penny,

It’s great to see your interest in getting a great sound output! It looks like the Signal Path is becoming clearer and clearer.

If you haven’t stumbled on our help center yet, I wanted to share on this thread two very helpful articles that explain in more detail the Signal Path:

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