DRC, the missing link in the chain

#1

And yes… the DRC (Digital Room Control) in our Rose RS130 is indeed a missing process.

For the simple sake of experimenting, today I added the DRC to my RS130+RD126.
My system is in fact a 7.4.2 if connected as a Home Theater and a 2.2 if connected in stereo mode.

Yesterday I spent about four hours with REW and RePhase, but at some point I stopped because I thought it was too complex. The setup procedure is very well explained, but definitely too complex.
I will probably work again in another session and create the convolution files to add to Roon for DRC.

However, while working with REW, I had the keyboard and mouse resting on the top of my Anthem AVM90 and I asked myself… but if I move the cables and insert the AVM90 between the RD160 DAC and the Primaluna Pre?

After all the Anthem AVM90 has the phenomenal ARC Genesis… said and done.

Even though I knew I was creating a redundancy, I inserted (just moving two cables) the AVM90 between the RS130+RD160 pair and the Tube Pre Primaluna EVO-400.
I calibrated Anthem ARC Genesis …and voilà … DRC included.

The result?
Is incredible !
The already fantastic sound of the RS130+RD160, if appropriately enriched with an environmental control, acquires more dynamics, better control of the bass and softens the mid-high range which in my system is always a little too accentuated.

now the path from Qobuz to the two B&W 802Ds is quite long…
Qobuz → Roon → RS130 → RD160 → AVM90 → Pre Primaluna EVO 400 → 2 x Power Amp EVO 400 + Anthem Power STR → 2 x B&W 802D + 2 x SVS SB3000

I would like one day for the RS130 to have built-in DRC, if not equal to ARC Genesis at least a Dirac or Lyngdorf Room Perfect, or, why not, an all Rose DRC.

As long as the RS130 is without DRC, it remains a good product, or rather excellent, but incomplete.

Double-click in the pic

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3 Likes
#2

And now you have finally did something that does, definitely and truly, affect the sound quality.

Of course you are also now taking the RD-160 output, digitize it in Anthem, apply room correction, then convert it back to analog using Anthem’s ESS DACs. At this point you might as well exclude the RD-160 from the chain altogether with no effect at all.

Ironically, large part of ARC’s improvement is probably due to it trying to remove as much of tube distortion that PrimaLunas are causing as it can…

#3

How do you connect RD160 to AVM 90? I’m assuming via RCA; if so, do you receive as 2.2 or 2.0 with “Convert Analog” ON or OFF.

2d: I don’t understand why you desire DRC in RS130 - AVM 90’s Arc Genesis is incredible (especially with two measurements). Room Correction/Control is typically a prepro/preamp function (not a streamer function - streamers don’t even know anything about the speakers; streamers have no audible capability to analyze/determine the room characteristics let alone manage the speakers for crossover & room correction.

BTW, you have an impressive system (its a Wow!). Why two stereo power amplifiers (Evo 400 to Anthem STR)?

#4

Yes ! this is the reason I said “this test is redundant”.
This is just a test, as an end in itself, to prove the effect of the DRC applied to the RS130+RD160

In this test, the RCA output of the RD160 in connected to Analog In 1 of the AVM90.
Anthem ARC Genesis processes the Stereo 2.0 signal and transforms it into Stereo 2.2 according to the zone settings in Profile 2 (Profile 1 is for the Home Theatre mode) (*)

My setup has two profiles (or zones):
Zone 1 / Profile 1: Home Theatre 7.4.2 with ARC Genesis Room Correction
Zone 2/ Profile 2: Stereo 2.2 without correction because in profile 2 the Anthem AVM90 is totally excluded. The RS130+RD160 in 2.2 is connected directly to the Primaluna EVO 400 preamp.
The Primaluna Preamp has an XLR Out connected to the 4 x Power Amp and an RCA Out connected to the Subwoofers (2 x SVS SB3000)

Not really… just as an example DRC is applied also in Roon Nucleus that is not a pre-amp

I created a Horizontal Bi-Amping, i.e. the Primaluna EVO 400 preamp drives four amplifiers: the two Primaluna EVO 400 Power Amp drive the medium and high frequencies of the B&W 802D in Mono mode, i.e. both channels of an amplifier are connected in parallel and drive a single Mid-High frequency channel. The Anthem STR instead drives the bass section of the two B&Ws in classic stereo.
Briefly stated:

  1. Primaluna L = MHF L,
  2. Primaluna R = MHF R,
  3. Anthem STR L = LF L,
  4. Anthem STR R = LF R,
    …Horizontal Bi-amping precisely

(*)
Since the two subwoofers must work both in Profile 1 (Home Theater) and in Profile 2 (Stereo), in the central part of the furniture holding the setup (see the photo) I created an electronic panel with some auxiliary functions:

  1. A relay to switch the subwoofers from profile 1 to profile 2
  2. A volume balancer to align the volume of the two Primaluna for the MHF and the volume of the Anthem STR for the two LF channels
  3. An array of 4 VU meters with bars (as well as pointers) to adjust the volumes
  4. the sinusoidal function generator for the 1000 Hz needed for points 2 and 3
  5. A sound spectrum reader working with its own microphone
  6. An ultra-linear power supply for the 12V parts such as Ethernet switches and Roon Server PC.
  7. The panel is managed entirely by an Arduino Giga WiFi Microcontroller + Arduino Giga Display
    All functions and signal to the panel are galvanically isolated from the HiFi devices via Audio Transformers.
1 Like
#5

Wow, Wow, Wow! You’ve done a lot of research/planning. The outcome is incredible. You have combinations I’ve never heard of. Today, I am definitely the student. Thank you for that.

For my continued learning, can you elaborate what a DRC in the RS130 would control

  • is it controlling the analog signal, amplitude and is it automated or controlled via manual intervention? (I’ve never been a Roon user, so I don’t understand)
  • what are the features/functions (benefits) being controlled that the AVM 90 Arc Genesis is not managing?

BTW, gave you another :heart: You have impressed me!

#6

Just goes to show that proper DRC has far greater, and far more beneficial effect than worrying about SFP modules or what runs on the Roon core.

You could, optionally, use something like Acourate, Focus Fidelity, or similar to generate similar corrections with less manual effort. On the other hand, ARC is reasonably good, enables redirecting low frequencies to subwoofers and high-passing mains, and applies to any source playing, not just Roon.

B&W :slight_smile:

This is a pretty impressive setup. Of course, would be just as impressive without LPS which at best do not do anything and often make things worse…

It’s called “Wiim.” Or “EverSolo.” “Node Icon” if you want a better (Dirac) DRC. Or Lyngdorf, theirs is supposed to be very good, probably better than ARC. All have much better DACs than 160, too (so does the Anthem, though).

Doing DRC in the 130 would be of limited utility – it only has a stereo digital output, and no analog outputs at all, so no proper crossover to subwoofers and high-passing mains is possible. DAC would be a more logical place for it, but 160 only has two channels, so no subwoofer output there either…

In Roon you could, theoretically, expand stereo tracks into multichannel format, then high/low pass some of the channels and apply proper DRC to everything. Won’t work with 2-channel Rose of course, but feeding the Anthem with HDMI from either Core or a miniPC running Roon Bridge, as nature intended, would be quite nice. If adventurous ewnough, you could even run a virtual sound card (or HQ Player) on the Bridge, loop Roon output through it with any kind of corrections and channel expansion you want, then send output to Anthem.

#7

No, a DRC possibly in the RS130 would operate 100% in the digital field.
If I were a Rose software designer, I would apply the DRC after the capture section (SFP Ethernet port) and before the actual streaming section of the streamer.

As for what the DRC does, explaining it in a few lines is not sufficient as well as misleading.
Read what Anthem ARC do and I wish one day Rose will inglobate something similar to their product.

However, the functions we have in the AVM90 and ARC Genesis would be fine, except that we would be forced to place the AVM90 after the RD160 DAC, thus canceling the function of the DAC.

My test described above was just a test, I certainly won’t leave the AVM90 permanently after the RD160 DAC.

A) Eversolo, Node Icon, Lyngdorf systems are not only DRC but also Pre Amp, not pure DRC system
And what about Trinnov Nova ?

B) If I understand correctly, if you were to introduce DRC hardware (DRC only if any) after the RS130 will you eliminate the RD160 DAC ? Why ? a DRC Processor is not a DAC…

C) Can you briefly explain the advantages of using Roon + FocusFidelity SW ?

D) For Roon, are you using a Windows/Mac PC Server or a Nucleus Titan :star_struck: ?
What is your opinion on the Nucleus Titan?
For 4250 euros (in Italy) it seems like an unreasonable price to me

#8

From the network input to data processing (extracting raw PCM/DSD from whatever service or storage you are streaming from) IS the streaming part. The rest is DDC, converting network data into USB/I2S/Coax/Whatever output.

Of course DRC would have to fit in between the two.

Meaning that they also offer far more utility than 130/160 combo.

Or Nova. Or something from MiniDSP. Or you could make something yourself on a computer out of various DAW plug-ins. The list is endless, really.

Based on what you said, going through Anthem with ARC resulted in noticeable improvement. And in this case you are using Anthem’s DACs (and ADCs, too) anyway. They have better specs than 160, so what purpose would it serve?

You certainly could plug some different DRC somewhere either prior to 130 or between 130 and 160, and bypass processing in the Anthem, but it does not make sense – you have as good, if not better, DACs in the Anthem. I would have bought one myself, if the company weren’t a bunch of lying liars still advertising Roon Ready support for devices that are definitely not getting it.

In your case, if you use ARC, there may not be so many, but you do get a flexible filter designer where you can tweak corrections to your heart’s content (although there are even more powerful ones, like Acourate, if you want to go into the whole making your own DSP crossovers for active speakers etc. thing) and generate an infinite number of corrections. It also creates individual convolution filters for every frequency up to 384KHz so no filter resampling is done).

In my case, 99% of my listening is through Roon, and I have at least 5 zones where I care enough about quality to correct them. With Roon and FF (or REW, or any other filter designer) I measure once, create corrections I am happy with, and let Roon apply them to each endpoint properly.If I feel like changing something, I just tell Roon to pick up a different filter.

I am running it on my Synology NAS. It has access to terabytes of storage, with redundancy and everything, music files (local only, of course) do not need to move across the network to get to Roon, and the OS is quite stable. The only times I ever have to reboot it is when Synology pushes out DSM updates.

It also happens to be galvanically isolated from at least all the Rose devices I have :rofl: sitting on one side of a fiber link across the house…

Eh… pretty much the same as of 130 :laughing: you are paying for the bling, not any meaningful advantages, and I find Roon’s ROCK OS to be woefully inadequate for any technical person.

It is :slight_smile: Titan is aimed at people who do not know computers, do not want to touch computers, and want a pretty box they can stick on the equipment rack. And you get couple years of Roon service thrown in, which doies not really put much of a dent into the purchase price…

I do not think you would be happy with it. Something matching Titan’s performance could be built in a fanless case for under $1000. For half the price of Titan you can get a top of the line (well, short of maybe a fancy graphic card only useful for games or crypto mining) workstation from a professional line from Lenovo, Dell, or some other reputable vendor, which will wipe the floor with Titan in terms of performance. And you could run anything on it in addition to Roon, too.

Basically, if I needed to specify a Roon server for someone computer illiterate and that I would not want to help out much, I’d tell them to get Nucleus. At least it is hard to mess up – it doesn’t even come with a keyboard or anything, and you can’t really change anything on it. For my mom, say, I’d just resurrect one of her old laptops and shove it in the closet. At least there she’d have a screen to look at if something goes wrong.

Myself, I’d keep running it on a NAS. If I were to run out of capacity (I’d need to get another couple thousand albums for that though) or wanted to apply DSP to DSD512 tracks… then I’d get a workstation. Would still be cheaper than Titan and perform better…

#9

In my setup the Primaluna preamp has two tasks:
Task 1. In the input section is needed to switch the RS130+RD160 Stereo 2.2 or the AVM90 to Home Theatre 7.4.2
Task 2. in the output section drive 4 channels in Bi-Amping MHF (2 x EVO 400) and LF (Anthem STR)

To add DRC, one idea might be to replace the Pre Primaluna EVO 400 with a Pre Anthem STR that has DRC incorporated.
The Pre Anthem STR would also have the advantage of managing the two subwoofers directly and not through the AVM90 as I have at the moment.

The price of an Anthem STR is lower than a Pre Primaluna and I think it’s easy to exchange them in the same store where I normally make my purchases.
Anthem and Primaluna in Italy are distributed by the same distributor.

Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but last night I couldn’t turn a blind eye thinking about this solution.
After the test I made yesterday, it is difficult to listen without DRC…
Psychoacoustics is constantly working …

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#10

…or leave the setup as it is and insert a MiniDSP model DDRC-22A which has analog in and out.
The DDRC-22A should be inserted between the output of the RD160 and the input of the Primaluna EVO 400.
The MiniDSP DDRC-22A uses Dirac Live.
I know absolutely nothing about the Dirac Live and how it compares to the ARC Genesis installed inside an Anthem STR, but given the cost ratio of 1 (MiniDSP) to 5 (Anthem STR) it’s worth looking into.

#11

I recently added a Trinnov Nova to my 2.1 setup. I opted to connect the nova to the xlr out of my dac rather than the coax from my rs130. There are a couple of advantages to this config even though on paper, it has more conversions.

  1. I am able to play all sources including some dsd512 files and 768pcm. the output from the rs130 into my topping dx9 is pretty clean and feeds the nova a very good single via the dacs xlr out.
    The dx9 also has a good headphone amp and I am able to keep that in the setup.
    So the connectivity looks like the following:
    Internet-fiber sfp - rs130 usb -dx9 xlr-nova xlr out to marantz model 10 amp xlr - L/R 2 way audiomachina UM speakers and nova xlr ch 3 out to the rel#31 sub xlr

I am impressed with what the nova was able to do in my less than ideal listening room (really a small office with a lot of hifi gear crammed in!)

#12

This will work, too, but this way you will, again, be taking analog output of the 160, running it through ADC, and then using MiniDSP’s DAC to get corrected analog output. It seems that ADC’s in Anthem are higher resolution than MiniDSP’s ones, although being a rather skeezy company Anthem conveniently does not mention anywhere at what sampling rate is ARC processing actually done.

But if you really want to use 160 in a way where it is not completely wasted, you might consider using miniDSP Flex (digital IO version) installed before the 160. Have it cross subwoofers over to digital outputs3/4 and use any old DAC to feed subwoofers, and send high-passed mains on output 1/2 to the 160.

Just goes to show that room correction is orders of magnitude more important than any snake oil SFP, external clock and other woo-woo :slight_smile:

Couldn’t you just tell your 130 to downsample to the rate Nova accepts and bypass the Topping though?

#13

The nova doesn’t accept dsd files. I agree with you regarding any audio improvement from jitter reduction, etc is probably not discernable at least for me in my setup. Most of the reasons for connecting the nova via the xlr outs of my dac are flexibility related. I still need to A/B test with the rs130 directly connected to the nova but I lose some of the flexibility in my overall setup.
I know I can connect the rs130 to the dac via usb and the nova via coax or optical and just switch between the 2. The issue with that is I have the sub connected to the nova so that it is “corrected/integrated” and when using the dac (bypassing the nova) I would not have the sub connected to the amp and would have to move that connection manually.
From a measurement perspective, even after a few d/a/d/a conversions, I am still able to correct in room to a relatively flat target curve from 20-20K. I have several target curves that I have created but surprisingly, the flat curve sounds best. Once again this is in my room with my setup.

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#14

and yes, I know you can convert dsd to pcm with the rs130 and that was the config that I was planning on using it I went that route. The dac that I am using, while relatively cheap, does a very good job with some really good chips that do bit perfect conversions.

#15

Is the Trinnov license included with the purchase of Nova? Do we need a license for 2 or 4 channels to drive the two main speakers and the two subwoofers?

#16

Just as I was going to say that :slight_smile:
At least Topping is reasonably priced and a perfectly fine DAC (and in practice you need to do a lot of A to D to A to D… conversions before it becomes audible.

I believe you get 2 channels of Trinnov processing with base Nova hardware and can but additional channels for something like $1000 per pair (Euro prices might be different).

#17

correct on the licensing. You can shop around as some dealers were offering $500 for the extra 2 channels. the base unit comes with 2. I needed to purchase an extra set of licenses for the .1 (single sub). They don’t sell the licenses for individual outputs, only in pairs for a list price of $1k.

#18

I still want to try the rs130 directly into the nova as I always like to simplify when possible!
The topping dx9 is pretty special for a relatively cheap dac. The specs (like a lot of the chifi gear) are pretty impressive but the dx9 does more than that. The sum of its individual parts add up to a very clean signal. I am not sure how long it will last (compared to the marantz model 10 amp!) but in the meantime, hearing is believing and this setup works for me!
I am also working on a custom case for the nova that will be based on the look and build quality of the D’Agostino gear. The nova is meant for pro studios where they are not as vain as someone like me :grinning:
The marantz amp is pretty stunning in person and the hifirose rs130 is not that bad either. the nova is very good technically. Much more modern than their older gear that look like someone stuffed an old cheap pc into a cheap case. The nova is much smaller, uses an arm cpu and runs quiet and cool. It just looks very plain. I plan on changing that in a not so subtle way!

#19

There is some uncertainty about Topping’s build quality and support, but they certainly make well-engineered and good-sounding equipment.

Sounds like a fun project. I would not necessarily want anything with D’Agostino’s design in my house (well, if Mr. D’Agostino paid me…) but this is a matter of taste.

Which is pretty much what it is. Just goes to show that even Trinnov, which is pretty much the best at what it does, and especially with pro-oriented Nova, works perfectly fine without a single SFP module, cyber-shafted external clock connector, or I2S interface just fine. Also shows that one does not need high-resolution even for pro-level work :slight_smile:

Please post pictures when you’re done!

#20

I understand that D’Agostino can be polarizing but probably less so than my other obsession, Metaxas and Sins!

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The D’Agostino look pretty tame compared to Mr. Metaxas’s creations!

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