Roon Sound Quality

[Topspin70]

Is upsampling a common practice with computer audio? I thought it would be recommended to hear music as intended, red book as red book, high res in the corresponding resolution they come in. I appreciate that finding the sound that one would enjoy most should take precedence but somehow there's a sense that we are manipulating the original recordings to suit our tastes. Apologies if I'm the ignorant one here. I'm old school stereo trained.

[Doak]

With respect to filters, I think you should try as many as you can stand, but most people (not all) seem to like one of the poly-sinc variants.Jussi/Miska has said that the non-MP (i.e., linear-phase) variants are good when you want better rendering of spatial cues and the MP variants are good when you want better transients. I find this works for me — I like poly-sinc-short-MP for small jazz ensembles and poly-sinc-short for big bands and orchestras.

 

With respect to upsampling, I think you should try upsampling everything to 32/384 and DSD128, the maximum rates your Lampi will accept, and see which (if either) you prefer. As I understand it, the idea of upsampling is to get any filtering artifacts as far out of the audible band as is possible.

 

--David

Thanks David!

Doing just as you suggest.

Gloriously gloomy/promisingly nasty weather here today - just right for doing the job at hand.

Much appreciated.

[orgel]

Is upsampling a common practice with computer audio? I thought it would be recommended to hear music as intended, red book as red book, high res in the corresponding resolution they come in. I appreciate that finding the sound that one would enjoy most should take precedence but somehow there's a sense that we are manipulating the original recordings to suit our tastes.

 

I think the fair way to characterize this issue is that there are two camps: The bitperfect side adheres to the approach you've described and generally uses more minimal (but not necessarily inexpensive) hardware and software that gets the job done. The upsampling side has a lot of different factions but tends to use higher powered computers and more complex software that allows upsampling within one's DAC's capabilities and filtering that's customizable, to a greater or lesser extent, to suit one's system and tastes.

 

Since I'm in the upsampling camp, I'll just point out a couple of things that are most salient to me: First, after a lot of experimentation with a range of software, I find I just prefer the sound I get with upsampling and filtering that I've spent some time fine-tuning in my system. Second, and this seems to be frequently overlooked, is that in the overwhelming majority of cases, it's not really whether you do or don't do upsampling/filtering, it's whether you do it in your software on your computer or whether you let your DAC do it.

 

There's been a lot written on this subject here, so if you want to delve more deeply, feel free to check out, for example, the HQ Player thread and also the Sound Galleries Music Server thread:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/hq-player-20293/

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/sound-galleries-music-server-25805/

 

--David

[Topspin70]

I think the fair way to characterize this issue is that there are two camps: The bitperfect side adheres to the approach you've described and generally uses more minimal (but not necessarily inexpensive) hardware and software that gets the job done. The upsampling side has a lot of different factions but tends to use higher powered computers and more complex software that allows upsampling within one's DAC's capabilities and filtering that's customizable, to a greater or lesser extent, to suit one's system and tastes.

 

Since I'm in the upsampling camp, I'll just point out a couple of things that are most salient to me: First, after a lot of experimentation with a range of software, I find I just prefer the sound I get with upsampling and filtering that I've spent some time fine-tuning in my system. Second, and this seems to be frequently overlooked, is that in the overwhelming majority of cases, it's not really whether you do or don't do upsampling/filtering, it's whether you do it in your software on your computer or whether you let your DAC do it.

 

There's been a lot written on this subject here, so if you want to delve more deeply, feel free to check out, for example, the HQ Player thread and also the Sound Galleries Music Server thread:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/hq-player-20293/

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/sound-galleries-music-server-25805/

 

--David

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation. You touched on an important point that I often forget and that's the fact that DACs 'manipulate' the output to produce a sonic signature that is unique to it (or at least try to). Otherwise every DAC would sound the same. I'll read up the links you shared and try to see which camp I enjoy being in most.

[jimbones]

I currently am running a dell laptop with JPlat Femto. Sounds excellent to my ears. I am thinking of getting Roon. Will that improve the SQ of my system?

[bobbmd]

@jimbones it might I think it does as well as Audirvana +3- its all subjective I think you can try ROON on monthly basis and decide how it improves SQ