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

Showing 2 responses by mapman

Hmmm well one reason to be glad I have not jumped to Roon yet.

I’m pretty sure nothing I use up-samples. Not something I would even want at least with CD resolution material. I’d be more receptive if lower and done well. Just do it right please and don’t expect the user to adjust for a defect in design or implementation.

I have a technical background in image processing. The kind they use these days to analyze images from Mars, etc. I don’t want my audio gear doing some of the things to the digital audio data that they do to extract certain information of interest at the moment out of those images often at the cost of other information present originally. Just deliver all that’s provided accurately and use the full dynamic range available without clipping anything please. if anything else is needed it can be done optionally downstream from there.
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?