Interesting,my Dac is considered a dsd Dac,and I am a new Roon user. I am not at home right now to try this,I assume it is in output settings.I think mine is set to native or something similar. I have 2,200 of my own albums,but also use Tidal.I take it you are converting everything,including Tidal to Dsd? Will give it a try tomorrow.
Do the Naim streamers decode DSD from Roon?
I don’t know Mike, my Dac is a Musical Fidelity MX Dac. It converts everything across all inputs to Dsd. Now whether or not using Roon to convert it,rather than the Dac itself is better, I will find out when I try it.
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Yep, if you send FLAC to a Naim streamer, it will decode the FLAC, extract the PCM, send to the SHARC processor which will create a modified and processed oversampled LPCM stream using, I believe, an I2S interface to the DAC chip(s) themselves.
Right, forgot the SHARC in the chain
This is a key point in any comparison. The file sizes (I’m remembering FLAC examples only, I think) of the same tracks on albums in supposedly the same resolution can vary considerably and that goes for downloads too. For example, my dbPoweramp rip of the Cocteau Twins’ track Musette with drums from the album Head Over Heels in 16 bit 44.1 KHz FLAC is 49.5 MB in the rip and 32.6 MB in the Qobuz download. No prizes for guessing which sounds better. There is nothing between the streamed and local versions of the Quobuz FLAC even with the Innuos Statement in offline mode.
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I guess the Qobuz download sounds better. 
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Michael even if the lossless compression levels are different - and the track length is the same - then that is huge difference - are you sure you are compressing the FLAC file with your rip - or does your rip come from a noisy master I wonder kind of unlikely.
The FLAC compressed file contains identical information irrespective of compression level. There is no loss of information with FLAC compression - unlike psychoacoustic compression methods like Ogg, MP3 or AAC.
FLAC uses similar concepts as many network compression and computer file compression methods such as ZIP.
Thanks, Simon.
My assumption was that the masters were perhaps different, but on reflection that could well be nonsense, having forgotten that one can opt for different levels of compression with FLAC.
To be honest I can’t remember what the settings were for the rip, but I suspect I have never changed them since the agony of ripping my collection and find upon checking in dbPoweramp that my default is lossless uncompressed. So we’re very probably talking about my own uncompressed FLAC rip and the Qobuz compressed FLAC, which puts me at a bit of a loss as to the difference in sound quality. I’ll have to have another listen. It’s been a quite a while since I have compared them and can at present only listen on headphones with the Atom HE, which will be less revealing than the 500 system. Playing the Cocteau Twins now while my better half is working could well be a hanging offence…
Just as well I didn’t commit myself to prizes, eh? 
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The difference in file size between FLAC compression levels is very small, so I don’t think that could account for the 49.5 vs 32.5 difference you mention. You would be lucky to get that sort of reduction in file size from FLAC vs WAV.
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Exactly. @Michaelb did you check if there’s embedded artwork in each of the tracks in the larger version, but not (or smaller pictures) in the other one?
Not sure how to check on that. In DBPoweramp they both show as lossless level 5, but the difference between the corresponding files is much bigger than the artwork file used for the ripped file (92kb). As far as I can tell the album artwork is embedded in each track file.
I have managed to have a listen to both on the Atom HE with Utopia and the 500 system and there is a perceptible but very small difference. On Musette with drums, for example, Fraser’s voice stands out a tiny bit more above the guitar and drum machine and everything is very slightly more textured. But there’s very little in and - let’s face it - isn’t what anyone would call an audiophile recording. It just happens to be the only one I can remember offhand where there was this big difference in file size.
Any tag editor should display the embedded artwork and its size when you open the track in the tag editor.
Or copy one track from both albums, open both copies in the track editor and delete the artwork completely, then save them and check their new sizes
Thanks. OK. Did that. The artwork in the rip is the cover art and just under 92 kb whereas it is the same cover art in the Qobuz download but 116 kb! 
So, it’s not that.
Can anyone tell me how to change the output in Roon to DSD? I quickly looked, Roon core is on my Laptop, but did not see the option.
Go to Roon DSP, turn on Sample rate conversion, there are some options about DSD.
But I would not use it, I use HQPlayer to do the sample rate conversions for both PCM and DSD.
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Where do I find DSP? I need a direct path, is it under General, setup, play actions, Audio etc…?
Press the little speaker icon (bottom right) and another menu box comes up - press DSP and another menu opens with your DSP options
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Thanks James, but I don’t see an option to convert PCM to DSD, like the other poster mentioned. Have to leave for work now, so will try again tomorrow.
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