Streaming clarification

[audio_engr]

Arup,

Many thanks for the reply. You convinced me to try it but I've gone back to streaming PCM as PCM at its original resolution.

The first thing I noticed when I tried the DSD conversion was the drop in level. I'd been expecting the 6 dB drop associated with the DSD  to PCM conversion in the Devialet, I deal with that when I stream the DSD64 files I have on my Nucleus+ to my 140 Pro, but I'd forgotten about the 3dB loss in the Headroom settings which I also copied from that post on the Roon forum.

Once I had the level back up to my usual listening level I had mixed feelings. I don't play classical very often and rarely orchestral music. Mostly I play small group jazz. I put on an album by Viktoria Tolstoy, a 96/24 high res download and tried that. I thought that everything sounded cleaner but "too clean" in a sense. One of the things I like about my system is how natural voices sound, especially the sense it delivers of voices coming from breath. Tolstoy's voice lacked that sense of breath and I thought the sense of chest tone had diminished. I liked the cleanness of the sound, the voice sounded a little sweeter as a result, but that added sweetness came at the cost of losing my sense of her as a breathing person. As a result I lost some of the sense of "naturalness" that I like and that's not a price I like paying, even if things sound a little sweeter and cleaner in some ways.

I'll add a caveat to that comment. There's a part of me which thinks that what I should do is to live with the change for a week in order to get used to it because when I do that I stop hearing the differences and I start hearing the sound that I'm getting. I need time to become accustomed to a change in sound so that I can appreciate the change for what it offers rather than simply noticing what it changes. When I make changes I usually go that way but with some changes, and this was one of those occasions, I seem to have an immediate reaction which causes me to put things back the way they were. I've learnt over time that I can usually trust those reactions. I may try it again in a day or two and try to stick with it for some days but at the moment I don't want to do that. I'll see if I still feel the same way in a couple of days after letting what I heard work on my subconscious in the background.

At present I can understand why someone might like and prefer converting PCM to DSD before streaming to the Devialet, it does have some attractions for me, but those attractions seem to come at the cost of the loss of something else that I really like.

RE the EtherREGEN 2:  on of the changes is that the single ethernet port on the B side is going to be a gigabit port rather than a 100T port. That concerns me. I'm still not convinced that Devialet have completely solved the RAAT/ethernet problem and Devialet's last recommendation on that issue was to use a 100T connection to the Devialet. That 100T port on the current model is one of its big attractions for me. Most of the time I'm running RAAT over ethernet without problems but for some reason every now and then I seem to have a week or so when the RAAT connection keeps dropping in and out and my network connection between  the Nucleus and the Devialet becomes unstable. I turn things off and back on and eventually things go back to being stable again for months. It's frustrating because I can go into Roon's Audio settings menu and I can see the Devialet available for Airplay and also for connection using Devialet's own AIR protocol but the Roon Ready connection just doesn't show. Even worse, I can sometimes see it come back into existence in Roon's Audio settings menu and then just disappear again a couple of seconds later on occasion. I'm reluctant to go back to using a gigabit connection to the Devialet while this sort of problem still exists, even if it is sporadic and only occurs at intervals of several months.

David

David, 

So good to hear from you. 

For my DSD64 setting in Roon, I use Smooth, minimum phase setting. And I do not use Headroom management as I've never had a case of overload. 

We humans whenever we sit down for an audition session, each time our frame of mind is different thus we interpret the sonic picture painted differently each session. A week's time is a great-great idea to allow for consistency and also to figure out if it works for you. Mind you, its different for each one of us; what may float my boat may not for you and vice versa. 

I understand your reluctancy for etherREGEN Gen-2 and I would similarly lean in that same direction as yours. It took ages to fix the 'dropping' issue and now that its done, none of us want it back. 

As for DSP functions whether in Roon or SAM in Devialet, it just didn't work for me at all. SAM with my speakers and in my setup was a strictly no-no. I only use "Sample Rate Conversion" as a DSP function in Roon and even any of the other DSP functions in Roon just didn't work for me as it severely robbed the naturalness of the sonic reproduction. 

- Arup