[dsyzling]

Regarding the Roon optimisatins and Volume control. Do owners of Chord dacs (or dacs with their own volume control) find changing volume control to fixed (rather than Device volume) improves the overall sound quality? There are two scenarios here, when you are using the 'Fixed' volume output from dac to separate amp and when using the internal headphone amplifier (e.g. on Dave, TT2, Hugo2). Do you find in both of these situations that setting Roon to 'Fixed' volume improves the overall sound? I note the default device setting is quite often 'Device volume'.

 

[TheAttorney]

It was a long time ago that I last checked, but I did feel that Fixed volume was slightly better than Device volume when driving Dave driving headphones (the only combination I tried, as I don't have a separate amp). This kind of makes sense because, with Device volume, Roon is doing some level of thinking/checking - and best not to let Roon think too much .

But either were MUCH better than using Roon's internal s/w volume control - best to never ever use that or any form of Roon volume control, such as volume leveling or headroom adjustments.

 

[dsyzling]

It was a long time ago that I last checked, but I did feel that Fixed volume was slightly better than Device volume when driving Dave driving headphones (the only combination I tried, as I don't have a separate amp). This kind of makes sense because, with Device volume, Roon is doing some level of thinking/checking - and best not to let Roon think too much .

But either were MUCH better than using Roon's internal s/w volume control - best to never ever use that or any form of Roon volume control, such as volume leveling or headroom adjustments.

Thanks, I wasn't actually sure what the difference in processing was. For example I wasn't sure whether Device volume meant hands off, don't touch anything, leave as is without any processing and Fixed meant ok, I'll adjust to some kind of fixed initial volume (zero ref point) - hence some processing involved. But to be honest it's difficult to tell from the descriptions and help pages. Although I think Roon suggests in their docs to use the device volume if the hardware is capable of adjusting its own volume. I'm currently running the adjustments here - with Fixed - so I'm going to let my brain bed in for a while and then may be revert back to Device at some point.

 

[TheAttorney]

Well, we don't know exactly what goes on under the hood, so there's a certain level of guesswork involved.

Both Device and Fixed volume sets Roon's output to be fixed at maximum level, which is good.

With Device volume, you can control the external device using Roon's UI, which can be convenient for some, but that means that Roon is outputting some control commands to the external device. And Roon has a reputation for being very "chatty" all the time, so it could well be communicating with the Device more than is strictly necessary - that's just my guess, but it would explain any subtle difference in SQ between Fixed and Device (but I do expect it to be subtle).

 

[Dogmiester]

Thanks, I wasn't actually sure what the difference in processing was. For example I wasn't sure whether Device volume meant hands off, don't touch anything, leave as is without any processing and Fixed meant ok, I'll adjust to some kind of fixed initial volume (zero ref point) - hence some processing involved. But to be honest it's difficult to tell from the descriptions and help pages. Although I think Roon suggests in their docs to use the device volume if the hardware is capable of adjusting its own volume. I'm currently running the adjustments here - with Fixed - so I'm going to let my brain bed in for a while and then may be revert back to Device at some point.

Not really sure how this can still be an issue.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...truth-about-dsp-volume-control-in-roon.23552/

 

[TheAttorney]

Not really sure how this can still be an issue.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...truth-about-dsp-volume-control-in-roon.23552/

The issue here is that I (and many others) don't believe any result from ASR. I'm open minded as to their good intentions and their measurements capabilities.
But my ears absolutely disagree with every single one of their resulting conclusions on products that I've had some experience with. And that includes Roon's DSP volume control, which I'm sure measures fine, as I'm sure Roon's engineers are technically proficient.

 

[Dogmiester]

The issue here is that I (and many others) don't believe any result from ASR. I'm open minded as to their good intentions and their measurements capabilities.
But my ears absolutely disagree with every single one of their resulting conclusions on products that I've had some experience with. And that includes Roon's DSP volume control, which I'm sure measures fine, as I'm sure Roon's engineers are technically proficient.

Recently I was testing a Cayin RU7 and using the much-lauded LineOut mode directly driving earphones and was forced to use the Roon DVC. I of course, was anticipating (preconditioned) that the Roon DVC would be inferior to the "3-segment resistor and switching array volume control" that was being bypassed. Not so. This led to some investigation and amongst the popular rubrics (digital volume control bad), some empirical data. Parsing the data confirms what I hear.
Not often I see "don't believe any", "open minded" and "absolutely" used in the same comment. Further, "I'm sure Roon's Engineers are technically proficient" does come off as a little passive aggressive and casts a pall over your opinion.

 

[kingoftown1]

Different implementations of digital volume control may have differing effects on sound quality.
Different implementations of analog volume control may have differing effects on sound quality.

A good digital volume implementation can trump a turd of an analogue one, and vise versa. It's also good to remember that your experience is a sample size of one. It doesn't invalidate it-- just pointing out that it's one specific instance that may not have global application.

 

[TheAttorney]

Further, "I'm sure Roon's Engineers are technically proficient" does come off as a little passive aggressive and casts a pall over your opinion.

Wow! And there was me trying to be balanced - or maybe my frustrations got the better of me?

Anyway, just to be clear, I have no objections to digital volume controls per se. E.g. I've never heard any analogue volume control sound as transparent as DAVE DAC's digital volume control. Which doesn't mean DAVE is perfect in every way, but I always say it how I hear it, good or bad. And I hear that all of Roon's DSP, including its volume control, impacts SQ. Which is a great shame because I'd like to use many of those DSP features, which are functionally excellent. And it is frustrating that Roon's engineers continue to not recognize that there's a problem here that needs to be looked into.

And maybe that's making me a bit passive aggressive. But if you want to see true passive aggression, or just full-on aggression, then read a few threads on Roon's own forum when anyone dares comment that there's any kind of SQ issue with Roon. Which is very friustrating for those us who love Roon overall and would like it to sound as good as its UI is to use.

 

[dsyzling]

On the subject of the Roon settings - particularly Library-Background audio analysis and On-Demand audio analysis, if you don't care about volume leveling, waveform analysis view, why would you ever turn these back on (temporarily) after adding music to your library? Reading the first page made me look into these settings in more detail and I kind of realise I don't really need them on at all - unless they are doing something else other than advertised. I definitely don't use volume leveling, I've never used the waveform analysis and haven't noticed the dynamic range indicator (may be mildly interesting for some tracks/albums) - so I'm really not seeing a reason to turn this back on when adding music.

 

[TheAttorney]

I also don't use any of the DSP functions that make use of the audio analysis buttons, but I do like looking at the wave forms and the file info to predict what volume I should set for the next album. A sort of manual predictive volume leveling function . The readings aren't reliable enough for me to predict the exact volume, but they get me to the correct ball park when moving between albums with big "loudness" differences. So not an essential feature, but I quite like it.

Also, 3rd party products can make use of the readings to do their own DSP. This hasn't happened much in practice, but for example, my Grimm MU1 server has planned its own volume leveling function in a future fpga firmware update, hopefully to sound better than Roon's.

A while back, I briefly compared two versions of the same track (that had and had not been audio analysed) and heard no difference in SQ.
But I did hear some degradation when the two audio analysis buttons were enabled (possibly because this caused the ever chatty Roon to forever poll the file store for new files to analyse). So I do temporarily enable background audo analysis after importing new albums, but then switch off the audio analysis. The end result is that I can see the pretty waveforms and othe info, but with no obvious loss in SQ when playing them.

 

[TheAttorney]

The latest Roon build 1353 seems to have caused quite a few issues for some, mostly performance related (e.g. slow searches). Not for me, but I did wonder if the sound was a bit subdued compared to the previous build. One of the posts said that disabling ARC (by typing 0 into the port field in ARC setup) helped his performance issue. So I gave this a go and I think it did boost SQ quite a bit.

But I'm away from my system for a few days, so can't conclude if this SQ boost was real or imaginary. If real, then this is a very worthwhile tweak. So can some one give this a go and see if you agree with me? Obviously only applies to people who don't use ARC.

Note that the port is reset to a default value each time Roon is rebooted, so an annoying thing with this tweak is that you have to re-enter 0 after each reboot. It is not a published feature, but has been mentioned a couple of times on the Roon forum - unfortunately there is no formal way of disabling ARC.

 

[goldwerger]

The latest Roon build 1353 seems to have caused quite a few issues for some, mostly performance related (e.g. slow searches). Not for me, but I did wonder if the sound was a bit subdued compared to the previous build. One of the posts said that disabling ARC (by typing 0 into the port field in ARC setup) helped his performance issue. So I gave this a go and I think it did boost SQ quite a bit.

But I'm away from my system for a few days, so can't conclude if this SQ boost was real or imaginary. If real, then this is a very worthwhile tweak. So can some one give this a go and see if you agree with me? Obviously only applies to people who don't use ARC.

Note that the port is reset to a default value each time Roon is rebooted, so an annoying thing with this tweak is that you have to re-enter 0 after each reboot. It is not a published feature, but has been mentioned a couple of times on the Roon forum - unfortunately there is no formal way of disabling ARC.

I’ve noticed a message slow down in the last few days, I have been wondering..

How do you do this change your describing? I am not familiar with this process.

 

[TheAttorney]

How do you do this change your describing? I am not familiar with this process.

Go to Setup > ARC and replace the number in the Port field with 0 (Zero). And do this every time you restart Roon. I didn't have any performance issues, but I did notice a SQ improvement.

 

[joseph69]

Been having some issues myself.
Last night I had more than several drop outs--as well as many tracks not being audible until ~5 seconds into the track. No issues tonight--so far.

EDIT: I've also noticed it's been taking Roon more time than usual to boot up lately.