i think you're making it too complicated. first thing to understand is that the NAA runs on the red -- no other computer needs to have NAA on it. in my opinion, you should put hqplayer and roon on your powerful pc and just let it run all of the time -- you want qobuz and tidal routed through...

it's very easy to set-up the holo audio red in roon -- plug an ethernet cable into the red; open the red web page and select roon (plus a couple of roon options); go into roon and enable the holo audio red. that's all there is to it.

With that cpu you should be able to upsample to dsd256. I don't think you'll be able to do dsd512.

Net, net on this forum is that the Spring3 is better than the Cyan2. Now whether that's worth 2.5x the price of the Cyan2 is a personal decision.

Upsampling to dsd512 in software (HQPlayer is the best way) and running the May in NOS mode is the way to go.

he was agreeing with you . . . he said apparently daunting (i.e. he meant some may find it daunting).

some people use hqplayer as their only software, so they need the volume control. for those that use a volume control on other devices, you should put hqplayer at -3db (or whatever works best in your system).

so to be clear: * you have roon running on a computer * you have hqplayer desktop running a computer (could be the same one at roon is on) * you have naa selected on the holo audio red * you went into hqplayer, selected the network button, selected the holo red as the output device, and put in...

that won't work -- the red operates as a streamer OR a DDC. you just want to run roon on your mac, run roon bridge on the red and use whatever output you want on the red to your dac. there's no better way.

I'm using USB from the Red to my Dave. I'm running the Red as an NAA and feeding via HQPlayer upsampled to 705k/768k.

only worry about the usb director settings if you're using the red as a ddc (ethernet should be disconnected). if you're using the red as a streamer, then nothing should be checked in the usb director area.

if you are using a usb cable, then select the "USB -> . . ." option. if you are using some other output (optical, coax, etc.) then select the red native output option.

upsampling to dsd512 is very cpu intensive. as mentioned, it sounds like your computer simply doesn't have enough horsepower to do it. dsd256 is much easier to handle.

The LCD-X is pretty heavy and requires you to keep your head level to keep them on straight. So count them out for listening in bed. The LCD-X sound great but I'm a bigger fan of the Sennheiser sound.

I use green all of the time, too.