Upsampling in Roon 1.3

[Spindrift]

Would totally agree with Confused on impressions at 176.4, though a multiple of 2 rather than 4 (88.2) also sounds quite nice with a balance between articulation and relaxed presentation.  So far my experiments with dsd via dop with the mutec USB passing the dsd signal to the devs (I.e mat engine) have resulted in a slight loss of detail - too smooth for my tastes . . will have to try mutec USB conversion next.

Are you sure you are outputting DSD to the Devialet via the Mutec?  My understanding was that the Mutec can accept DSD/DoP but will only output PCM.  For example, if I send DSD64 to the Mutec and then check what the Devialet is receiving it indicates 176.4kHz.

I could well be wrong here.  Does anyone know for sure that the Mutec can output DSD?  Previously my understanding was that it can't.

As another update, I have just tried running the microRendu direct to the Devialet via USB, with Roon upsampling to DSD64.  In this set up the Devialet displays DSD64 indicating that the 'MAT' algorithm is indeed in use.  To my ears this did not sound very good at all, very disappointing.  Everything sounded somehow thinner and a touch harsh.  There was the also occasional 'cracks', very similar to that you would get with vinyl, so I am wondering if something was not working 100% as it should.  Strange, because this issue was not apparent running DSD64 to the Mutec.

My conclusion so far is that the best set-up is either to use Roon to upsample to 176.4kHz, or alternatively turn off Roon's DSP engine and send the Mutec good old native 16/44.1.  I would need more time to separate these two though.

EDIT: I found this on CA, a post by Mutec's Julian Davidin response to a similar DSD query:

"The MC-3+USB does not pass through DSD64 without converting to PCM as this would either require re-clocking the native DSD signal or disabling the re-clocking stage entirely. If we were to disable the re-clocking, then there wouldn't really be a benefit to having the MC-3+USB in the chain. What exactly are you trying to do?

Julian"

Thats what I thought as well . . and I think if you feed the Mutec USB via a USB signal it will always covert to PCM as Julian mentions.  However if I feed the Mutec an AES/EBU signal (which is the DSD/dop signal) it passes the PCM shell to the Devs without conversion as far as I can tell (the Devs report DSD64 on the display).  I have an older Mutec 1.2 USB converter from a couple years ago that I used to convert the USB signal from Roon to AES/EBU.  In any event - as you say - not an improvement . . I'm leaning towards turning off the DSP engine.