Roon doesn't force you to upsample, @mapman but it is a nice feature to have.
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.
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.