Sound quality compared to moode

I have two Raspberry 4’s with identical power supply, identical local hard disk, and connectors. One is running Volumio, the other moODE, so I can compare easily. I’ve played around quite a bit and these are the main insights I had so far:

• A good power supply improves the sound of both!
• The moODE sounds better than the Volumio when connected directly to a DAC with USB
• With an S/PDIF hat (I have the DigiOne) the Volumio sounds as good as the moODE. There are tiny differences, but I couldn’t say which one is “better”

moODE seems to convert everything, also standard CD format, into a 32 bit, 96 kHz output rate at 6.1 Mbps. Not sure what Volumio does or whether this could explain the differences when connected via USB.

I would be interested to hear from others who run both distributions.

– Reiner