UPnP Sound Quality

[kompressor]

I use innuos zen mini via usb and to my ears upnp sounds much better than via usb, night and day actually. what do others on here use as a streamer? i’ve never been able to get air working so can’t vouch for sound quality.

[Finn]

Kompressor i vill bye the ney innuos zen mini mrk 3 With seperat power , and i Will have the option too use / USB , Spdif , and Stream from Tidal , and use core. Any comment . And Hello from Denmark

[JohnnySix]

HI All,

I tried Audirvana UPNP vs Audirvana Air Wifi with my Devialet. The difference is mainly "hardware". With UPNP, the file is played by the CI Board. With Air it's played in the computer and the  flow is sent to the DAC directly.
<SNIP>
A question : is it possible to use room correction (AU Plugin, like DIRAC) with Audirvana UPNP like Audirvana Air ?

Pardon me, just another software engineer breezing past this thread 7 months later...

Your comment caught my attention because it appears to answer my own longstanding questions about why my JRiver MC24 can't apply DSP to UPNP playback. If it has to deliver a file to the CI board then that would explain it... normal DSP adjustments are made in real time to the data; for UPNP it sounds like the streamer would have to re-generate a whole new, DSP'd file and then send that off in place of the original! I see now why it's not as simple for the software as I first thought.

[David A]

I don't understand either your post or the post from Inox which you quoted.

First, to deal with Inox's post. I am unclear when he refers to "Audirvana Air Wifi" whether he is referring to output from Audirvana streamed using Apple's Air wifi method or streamed over wifi using the Devialet AIR app. Either way, the CI board has several streaming inputs which include Devialet's AIR protocol and also Apple's Airplay so it would seem that either way, the CI board is going to be used and the CI board is also used for UPnP via the UPnP Renderer input. Yes, the Devialet has a buffer that is used with streaming input but that buffer holds at most a few seconds so it definitely isn't large enough to hold a file for a whole music track so whatever the streaming method the CI board is processing and sending file data to the DAC continuously to the Devialet's DAC. It isn't waiting until it has all of the data for the complete file for a given track and then passing the data to the DAC from a reassembled file.

I have no experience with JRiver but I use Roon which can apply DSP to the music being streamed and then stream the processed signal to the Devialet over Roon's RAAT protocol which uses TCPIP and also using Devialet's AIR protocol and neither of those methods involves the Devialet having to reassemble the whole file before sending it to the DAC and, as noted above, it couldn't do that anyway because the buffer isn't large enough.

I think if you're unable to stream a DSP processed signal from JRiver over UPnP to the Devialet's UPnP streaming input then the problem lies somewhere in JRiver rather than in the Devialet.

[JohnnySix]

Interesting. I guess we have to chalk up a point to Roon then for being able to apply DSP to UPNP. That'll be partly why it costs 8x as much per year as a JRMC upgrade.

I suppose it could be that a file -location- is passed to the UPNP renderer rather than the file itself, in which case it proceeds to read the data directly from the source in as large chunks as it can handle. In which case I would surmise that Roon is creating a temporary/virtual file buffer somewhere, with DSP applied.

[David A]

Interesting. I guess we have to chalk up a point to Roon then for being able to apply DSP to UPNP. That'll be partly why it costs 8x as much per year as a JRMC upgrade.

I suppose it could be that a file -location- is passed to the UPNP renderer rather than the file itself, in which case it proceeds to read the data directly from the source in as large chunks as it can handle. In which case I would surmise that Roon is creating a temporary/virtual file buffer somewhere, with DSP applied.

My understanding is that Roon passes the data to the Devialet either by using Devialet's AIR or by it's own RAAT protocol which is TCPIP. Neither are UPnP, Roon does not use UPnP and I said that. It does not pass a file location to the Devialet, it passes a stream in packet sizes determined by the protocol in use, AIR or RAAT depending on your choice. If DSP processing is being applied then it is applied to the data prior to it being packetised and Roon does not create a whole DSP processed file prior to starting to stream the data.

What I was trying to say is that I think Inox got it wrong in his post, and that you are getting something wrong in the conclusions you drew from his post. Whatever the reason for your problem is, it is not that "for UPNP it sounds like the streamer would have to re-generate a whole new, DSP'd file and then send that off in place of the original!" as you said because Roon is capable of applying DSP processing in real time to the data it streams.

I'm saying you need to look elsewhere for the solution to your problem because I think you're wrong about the cause of the problem.

Is there a JRiver users' forum somewhere you could post a question on and perhaps get assistance. As I said, I have no knowledge or experience of JRiver and I don't even know if JRiver is capable of doing DSP processing of any kind. A search of the JRiver Wiki which apparently serves as their manual has no index entry for DSP so you may not be able to do anything DSP processing in JRiver anyway.

[JohnnySix]

I appreciate the technical responses. JRiver has extensive DSP/PEQ facilities when outputting to USB & AIR, but the last time I tried selecting Devialet UPnP/DLNA as Output Device, I think it said something about DSP cannot be applied to a Zoned output or something, and JR Forums may have confirmed my fears. I am giving JR the benefit of the doubt, as they normally have good reasons for not implementing something across the board.

I intend to try all this out again this weekend, so I can verify my memories!

[JohnnySix]

I can confirm that JRiver (v24) treats DLNA/UPnP targets as separate "zones", and attempting to engage DSP with them produces the message "DSP is only allowed on local zones". Ah well. First-world problems, eh?

[Snoopy8]

I can confirm that JRiver (v24) treats DLNA/UPnP targets as separate "zones", and attempting to engage DSP with them produces the message "DSP is only allowed on local zones". Ah well. First-world problems, eh?

You can use Windows Media Player with a Convolver plugin to do DSP and cast to the Devialet using Upnp.  Yes, ugly, limited functionality WMP but it works, am using it to do DSP for my Phantoms.

[Alve]

Is that Devialet's AIR or Roon/AIR?

I have the same experience air vs upnp, tried both through audirvana on Mac mini. So no air for me.



We did all the tests in Audirvana + AIR / uPNP but as you asked I have just created a Roon trial account and did the same comparison (this one is not a perfect testing as we change the player, I think there is no uPNP support on Roon) but still the sound is superior on Audirvana + uPNP than Roon + AIR. (I played the same song in Tidal via Audirvana and Roon)

For the ones that are interested with a quick test: A Celebration For the Death of Man is the song from Agalloch as there is a guitar intro in the song, you can feel the difference in the sound stage and the bass definition quite easily. Even the guitar sounds more bold and realistic with uPNP.

Of course all the factors should be considered for these kind of comparisons and personal taste is very important criteria but I can definitely say that for me the result is not one sounds different than other. There is a obvious quality difference. If I had the difference that I have between USB and uPNP, I am OK to say it is related with my setup but my current feeling is more like there is something wrong with AIR. (Doesn't matter if it is Roon or Devialet)

Is there any technical document about AIR? Do we know how the async streaming works in the protocol? Is there any jitter solution or any clock fixes between the player and the streamer?