If the DAC displayed the format Roon sees, not what the DAC is receiving, the data would both be incorrect and inconsistent with all other uses of the DAC’s display. Similarly, if Roon is receiving 96/24 but is stripping off all bits greater than 16 we want the DAC display to tell us it is receiving 96/16. If an app is downsampling from 88.2/24 to 44.1/16 the DAC display should similarly tell us this.
The DAC’s accurate display led to our learning that Roon transcodes Flac to Wav under all circumstances; the user cannot turn this off. If the DAC incorrectly displayed “Flac” we would have been mislead and would not have learned what Roon is doing.
The problem is Roon, not the DAC. What is driving perhaps three known Roon users crazy is Roon does not tell you it is transcoding Flac to Wav. Thus it was reasonable for you to be confused by what the DAC was accurately telling you.
If PS Audio changed this and told the DAC to lie and claim it was receiving a Flac file when it was not, this would upset many more than three users.
This issue is easily fixed if Roon added a transcode to WAV or not software switch. I think the consensus would be to transcode (since it subjectively sounds better) and we’d be right back in the same place.
I find it odd Roon does not do this, or at least make it very explicit what it is doing.
On the other hand, I am perhaps not surprised as Roon’s emphasis is is convenience and interface, not sound. Many Roon users do not want to know anything about how it works.
Elk, I don’t think you understand. The Input, Rate, and Bits all display correctly. All I want is that stupid top center Wav display to indicate the original file format before Roon decoded it to wav.
I get it. Bet Elk does too. I think the display is correct.
BTW, nice Christmas record. One of my top 10 songs, subject to revision, is Aaron Neville’s, “Tell It Like It Is.” I heard him say in an interview that if he earned all the money due him for that song he’d have killed himself with drugs and alcohol. Interesting perspective on fame and wealth. Regardless, a fantastic song and talent.
It appears to me that Roon is transcoding flac to wav and passing it streamed as PCM. Roon just streams PCM or DSD. Roon is transcoding the flac hi-res correctly as I have indicated. I agree with Elk. To me, as long as the stream is properly decoded (res/bit width), I see no issue. However, it is good to know what Roon is doing. The PSA DAC is working properly as Paul has indicated.
I’m actually fine with the resolution, now that we’ve found the culprit: Roon automatically converts the FLAC files to WAV as a ‘service’ to avoid processing downstream at the DAC, thus relieving the DAC of some ‘lifting’. It would be nice if Roon ‘told’ us this was happening, or at least provided the option to transcode to WAV within the Roon settings.
This initially became a concern of mine when I was performing an A/B comparison between Roon-Bridge II and mcontrol-Bridge II and found I much preferred the mcontrol-Bridge II sound. I noticed the Roon-Bridge II showed “WAV” on the color display and mcontrol-Bridge II showed “FLAC” and I erroneously assumed that the FLAC files were then better than WAV. However, quickly thereafter I learned I had a few Roon DSP settings applied to my Roon-Bridge II configuration. I disabled all my Roon DSP settings to the Bridge II and now the Roon-Bridge II setup sounds identical to the mcontrol-Bridge II set up (to my ears). In short, letting Ted Smith’s magical DAC perform all the processing vs trying to tweak perfection within Roon is not advisable (according to my ears!)
@Elk - yeah, not really a fan of classical music, sorry. I used Mconnect for a few months and that was years too long. Roon is 1,000 times better and if you talk meta-data, millions times better.
So, I’m not an audiophile snob, just only stream hi-res flac, wav, and dsf… nothing else…
When Qobuzz integrates w/ Roon, may be disappointed. I hear it is jazz & classical loaded. Not interested in more hi-res files if they are mostly music I don’t listen to… we will have to wait and see, worth a try and I love hi-res streaming.
