That’s all very exciting, even for those not planning on running Roon. Can’t wait to get Torreys.
Thanks Paul, great news about the extensive update (Torreys and Bridge II). Nice to see the USB handle native DSD, will the Bridge II (in future updates) ever be able to process native DSD? I remember reading there was a limitation but I can’t find the thread. Presently my server can’t output DoP to the Bridge II so I have to switch to the USB input.
No, the Bridge continues to require DoP.
I still haven’t figured out how any computer will pass native DSD since most computers won’t recognize DSD. I have to sit with my engin eering people and get a lesson.
Paul McGowan said No, the Bridge continues to require DoP.My Rockna transport can deliver native DSD over I2s (up to 11.28MHz) - Will this be built in also in Torreys for the DS?I still haven’t figured out how any computer will pass native DSD since most computers won’t recognize DSD. I have to sit with my engin eering people and get a lesson.
Paul McGowan said Tons of other enhancements. It'll be called Torreys after Torreys Peak in Colorado.We should have a nice laundry list available including…well, for the moment I have to be coy. Can I say it’ll be the biggest enhancement, set of new features that we’ve ever had?
Can’t wait to tell you all that we’ve planned.
And no, I don’t yet have a date for Torreys.
Like everyone else, I’m on the edge of my seat, although I’m not necessarily looking to replace Yale (I’ve grown accustomed to its signature even if I had some minor comments on the overall sound). The question, Paul, is how many versions of Torreys are you and Arnie currently listening to?or
Another 20 but these aren’t the final versions. We have more work on the PIC and Ted’s still polishing. It’ll be some time.
Frode saidThe DS has supported native single and double rate DSD over I2S since about the 2nd software release. E.g. the NPC sends native DSD to the DS over I2S. The DS uses the same channel mapping for native DSD as the ESS dac chips so it's fairly standard. Jesus's chart has the details for a bunch of units: http://tinyurl.com/JesusChartMy Rockna transport can deliver native DSD over I2s (up to 11.28MHz) - Will this be built in also in Torreys for the DS?
Yes, but isn’t every input on the DS DOP’ed prior to entering the FPGA with the old OS?
Will this still apply?
Frode said Yes, but isn't every input on the DS DOP'ed prior to entering the FPGA with the old OS?Will this still apply?
Not quite - The new Native DSD over USB feature doesn’t involve any work in the FPGA at all - it has (almost) always supported it.
The FPGA has two types of inputs:
I2S/Native DSD - the two HDMI connectors, USB and the Bridge all share this format
Single wire biphase mark coding: S/PDIF, AES/EBU and TOSLink share this format
The FPGA uses exactly the same source for each I2S/Native DSD input and similarly for each BPM input and doesn’t know anything about where it comes from.
When the XMOS USB driver is updated to handle native DSD it will come to the FPGA as native DSD over the USB’s I2S input just like the NPC sends native DSD over HDMI connector’s I2S inputs right now. The FPGA doesn’t know about the new native DSD over USB feature at all.
The FPGA does internally check for true I2S formatting vs. native DSD formatting and then packages native DSD as DoP so that it can be transmitted, buffered, synch’ed (sunk?), etc. the same as any other kind of input. At the final upsampler, DSD (which is all DoPed at this point) is upsampled a bit at a time and PCM is upsampled a sample at a time. DoP’ing DSD saves having a separate path for DSD, buffering it separately, synching it separately, etc. and then re-time-aligning it with PCM on DSD/PCM or PCM/DSD transitions.
Frode saidPaul McGowan said No, the Bridge continues to require DoP.I still haven’t figured out how any computer will pass native DSD since most computers won’t recognize DSD. I have to sit with my engin eering people and get a lesson.
My Rockna transport can deliver native DSD over I2s (up to 11.28MHz) - Will this be built in also in Torreys for the DS?
That is already built into DS. DS has always been able to handle DSD without DoP through I2S. Torreys adds another dimension above that, DSD without DoP through USB.
Too many TLAs.
No Paul, it’s like this … 
TLA
If the DS treats dsd as dop then what’s the the difference whether dsd comes to the unit as dsd or dop?
I dont understand what the excitement is about.
Roon creators and executives Danny Dulai and Mike Fass gave a presentation at the NY Audiophile Society yesterday. As you might expect it was very informative and enjoyable. The product speaks for itself, but in this case it was ably assisted. I became a new Roon lifetime subscriber and now am very anxiously awaiting the updated Bridge II so that I can implement the Roon client/server architecture on it - directly feeding my DS Dac.
Having the Bridge as integral to the DS Dac could be a strong competitive advantage if the SQ is suitably high.
crabby said If the DS treats dsd as dop then what's the the difference whether dsd comes to the unit as dsd or dop?:) How the DS handles pushing bits around internally clearly doesn't affect which features it can implement and having two separate paths thru the FPGA for DSD and for PCM would almost certainly negatively affect sound quality.I dont understand what the excitement is about.
From a practical point of view some renderers can do native (or raw) DSD and can’t do DoP (or are much harder to configure for DoP.) It certainly has been the case that more renderers do raw DSD over an “I2S” connection than can produce DoP for an I2S connection.
There are a lot of DACs out there which people feel sound better when sent native DSD instead of DoP. This isn’t too surprising for at least two reasons: doing hunks of work every 16 samples (e.g. DoP) in a computer may well cause more (or less) computer generated noise (and jitter) than doing smaller hunks or work at the DSD bit rate. Similarly the noise (and jitter) on a USB line might be different with the two different packaging formats. At a more speculative level you might not be surprised if some DAC chips sounded better with DSD than having to unpack DSD from DoP.
These differences may be audible to some with the DS as well, but I’m sure that the magnitude of differences will be much smaller than most people expect.
Any expected schedule for new firmware? Really exciting to hear beta versions are ready to batch tests.
Nope. We’ve stopped predicting when code things are the holdup. Right now the programmers are working with Roon engineers to figure out why higher sample rate files skip and what to do about it. This can take a matter of hours or weeks to fix. And then once it’s fixed testing begins anew. I wish I had a better answer, but it’ll happen, for sure.
Torreys sure sounds very promising guys!
Any reason why we can’t just release Torrey’s without Roon integration so we can enjoy the benefit of the sonic upgrade??
Yeah, it’s a whole package that all fits together and changes the sound of the final product when we remove something or add something. I wish it were not that way and we could just release bits and drabs.
If it is a whole package, does that mean Roon will only work with the Bridge II installed in a Directstream? or, will Roon also be able to stream to the Bridge II if it is in a PWD?