Streaming clarification

[David A]

Sorry,
But for those that only use roon as a source (my case) what´s the best set up?
I don´t listen from any other format. Simple system, Tidal via roon to Dev straight to my ears, but i´d like to optimize the way i´m listenning too.
David, i saw the setup you mentioned from roon forum but, unless you tell me the opposite, looks unnecessary in my case.
Thanks.

What do you mean by "the best set up"?

You've obviously got both your Dev and your Roon source connected to the same network and the network connection is working.

When it comes to settings for Roon you've got 3 decisions to make. 

Since you're using Tidal the first of those decisions is whether you want Roon to do the first MQA unfold for you or not. The only way you can benefit from MQA with a Devialet is to let Roon do that first unfold because the Devialet has no MQA capabilities so in Roon's Device Setup menu for your Dev set "MQA capabilities to "No MQA  Support" if that says something else. That should be the default but if it doesn't show that then set it to that anyway, regardless of whether or not you want to use MQA. Then scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced settings and set "Enable MQA core decoder" to "Yes" if you want Rood to do the first MQA unfold or to "No" if you don't want to use MQA at all.. I leave all other settings in the Device Setup menu to the defaults.

The second decision is whether you want to have Roon do things like volume levelling (I don't) or upscaling or any other DSP processing. Once again I don't but as you will have seen in the posts above some people like to have Roon convert PCM to DSD. Others like to have Roon upscale everything, usually to 192/24. Once again I don't but if you want to have Roon do any of those things you set those options in Roon's DSP menu. Those are personal choices which can affect the sound and everyone has their own taste. Leaving DSP off means Roon will pass a bit perfect stream to the Dev at the original resolution of the file unless that resolution is higher than 192/24 which it won't be for music from Tidal or for most music you may have in your own library unless you've got some really high res downloads. Roon will downscale anything with a higher resolution than 192/24 to 192/24 because that's the highest resolution the Dev will accept from an input.

The third decision is how you want Roon to send music to the Dev and there are 2 parts to that decision.

The first part depends on how you have your Dev connected to your network. That's either by ethernet or wifi. Ethernet is best in my view but you may not be able to connect your Dev to your network by ethernet. The choices you will be able to make in Roon depend on how your Dev connects to the network.  When yo go to "Audio" in Roon's Settings menu you will see a list of all of the ways Roon is capable of sending music to your Dev so what you will probably see are a Roon Ready option, and under "Other network devices" options for using either Devialet AIR or AirPlay. Forget AirPlay. Either use Roon Ready or the Devialet AIR option. Both sound great but they do sound a little different to each other. I prefer and use Roon Ready but it occasionally "plays up" for me with a connection that drops out intermittently and I have to restart either Roon or my Dev. I don't have that problem with Devialet AIR. I put up with it with the Roon Ready option because it only happens once every few months and I think Roon Ready sounds slightly better than AIR but there are lots of people who think Devialet AIR sounds better than Roon Ready. Both sound great so it's your choice.

That's pretty much it if you're using wifi. If you're using ethernet you can play games with different ethernet cables and ethernet switches. Your choice of cables and switches can make an audible difference but if you're happy with the sound that you get after setting up Roon then there's no need to play with cables and switches unless you want to and you're chasing small improvements. It's up to you just how obsessive you want to become in chasing sound quality and I'd say I lean to the obsessive  :-)  You don't have to be obsessive to get good sound.

Basically once you've decided whether you're going to use Roon's Roon Ready or Devialet AIR output and whether to use MQA or not, Roon's default settings work fine in my view. Whether you connect to the Dev bay ethernet or wifi is up to you but I think ethernet is preferable. Any games you want to play with ethernet cables and switches is really icing on the cake and the cake is very good regardless of whether you choose to put icing on it or not.

My recommendation is to play with the Roon settings I mentioned above and see what you like. You'll get great results with your system as it is. You can make the system more complex by playing with music servers and ethernet cables and switches if you want to but changes there are going to cost you money but the starting point is always going to be those basic Roon settings. Get them set to your taste and they're not going to change whatever changes you make in your system.