Roon - Clipping and streaming


As some may know, upsampling may cause clipping. The explanation is complicated but it has to do with the arc of the new upsampled line crossing above the maximum digital value.

Had an interesting situation last night listening to Jasscast.CA.  Their signal is a little bassy.  On my Squeezebox sound was fine but on my main system ( Roon --> Mytek Brooklyn) I could hear distortion. 

To make a long story short, the upsampling is not identical on these two DAC's due to Squeezebox only accepting 24 bits vs. 32 for the Brooklyn and the Roon signal quality light showed it was clipping on my Mytek.  Easy enough to fix, go into Headroom Management and increase the headroom from -3 to -6. Problem solved, but what a weird thing.  Needed to be Jazzcast, perhaps because their signal adds some bass to the signal? Not sure why, but none of my other sources have ever shown this. 
erik_squires
I would not expect a device to expect me to detect and apply a manual adjustment to get the signal right.  Is this a common thing or unique to that Mytek?
Hey Mapman,

If your device upsamples, then it should apply the necessary headroom management.  There's a great article somewhere in the BenchmarkMedia.com blog, and as they point out, not all older DACs would do this accurately.

In the case of Roon, the Roon software is doing the upscaling (48k/24 to 96k/32), and it is in this process that clipping can occur.  What's odd is that we, the users are being asked to set the headroom for it to not happen. 
@erik_squires ,
Where in Roon do you set the headroom?
I just looked and can't find that setting.
Bob
@gdnrbob

When you’re in Roon, right click on the icon of your source in the lower right hand corner. Once you’ve done that you will see an option for DSP.

After you’ve clicked on DSP, you’ll come to a screen where you’ll see headroom management and upsampling as options. You can also access additional DSP features by clicking on add a filter.

As a frame of reference, I'm using the Roon amp on a Mac--so what you see could be a little bit different based upon how you're accessing Roon.