How Good a CD Transport is Required to Sound Better than Streaming?

godofwealth

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Your simple characterization of the Roon Algorithm is simply untrue. I’ve discovered many esoteric music connections in classical, jazz and otherwise that I bet even your favorite FM disc jockey from the hazy nostalgic past wouldn’t have a clue of.

I love and miss the old days of FM radio, but that’s no reason to dump on something that is really wonderful in the here and now.
Hmmm.…So what exactly is the Roon recommendation algorithm doing? I didn’t want to bring my personal background into this, but since it’s relevant, I have worked in AI research for 35 years (long before the tech companies got interested in AI). Recommendation algorithms by and large fit very simple statistical models to usage data. In short: they are dumb!

Geek discussion warning: let’s take Netflix as an example. You have a giant matrIx whose rows are users and whose columns are movies. The matrix entries are ratings. The matrix is extremely sparse, as most entries are zero. There are hundreds of thousands of programs to watch. Each user of Netflix barely watches a tiny percentage of the available choices. In this formulation, the recommendation problem is called matrix completion. Seems a hopeless problem: only a tiny percentage of entries are non-zero. Enter some cool math on what is called low-rank matrix completion. This assumption allows you to fill in the missing entries. I will skip the math — it involves ideas related to compressed sensing that incidentally can be used to create efficient digital codecs far better than FLAC.

But, here’s the main point. The Roon recommendation algorithm, like the Netflix method, has no clue what it is recommending. Books, movies, music, shopping behavior on Amazon — all use the same technology. All it cares about is the user data, which is just a highly sparse matrix. The algorithm cares nothing about the content. It knows nothing of the content.

So, unlike the FM music host, who is a trained professional in classical music or jazz, the Roon algorithm, like the Netflix algorithm is ”artificially stupid”. Next time you hear an article on AI, mentally replace the word “intelligence” with “stupidity” and you’ll get an accurate picture of the current state of the technology (I say this as someone who has spent his entire career in the field). We’d like to create an artificial music or movie critic, a program that actually listens to music or watches movies and forms its opinions. We have no clue how to do this since it involves solving the AI problem, which no matter what the hype you hear on the web, is many decades away from being solved.
 
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c1ferrari

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It is why I still remember nostalgically the Mark Levinson ML30, the Krell MD10, the Forsell and the Metronome Calypso CD transports, but forgot about all the others...

But surely nothing is more inspiring than two spinning open reels ... ;)
Still have my Forsell and P-0s. Reel can be magical.
 

MarkusBarkus

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You have a giant matrIx whose rows are users and whose columns are movies.
It's very satisfying to know I have my own row at Netflix! Wait'll I tell Sweetie! Thanks for the interesting info GoW, and for skipping the vexing maths. Carry on boys...
 

godofwealth

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I find it interesting that most movies and TV shows largely depict music playing on a vinyl record. Take the popular Amazon detective series Harry Bosch. He listens to jazz every night on his (gasp) vinyl record player using McIntosh equipment in a hilltop house with an amazing view of downtown LA.
 

godofwealth

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Interestingly, how long do you think it will be before we have advertisements on Roon? Let’s face it, Roon can’t survive long on user fees. Even the mighty Netflix is facing a bleak future and now introducing advertisements. I love Roon for its convenience, and hope they survive, as I hope Qobuz will survive, but as some one who has been around a long time and seen plenty of companies come and go, enjoy Qobuz and Roon while they are around. Don’t count on them being around forever. Even giants like Meta are grasping for survival right now. I am in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is currently in the worst recession it has known in decades. Hundreds of thousands of folks are being laid off. Twitter is an advanced state of meltdown and on life support. The mighty tech industry has lost 3 trillion dollars in market cap this year. And things are only going to get worse. The real recession has yet to start, in 2023 when the interest rate increases start biting into every sector of the economy (including high end streaming).

So, I like and enjoy Roon, but I’m hanging on to my obsolete silver and vinyl discs that I can still use when streaming music craters (but I hope to God it doesn’t).
 
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the sound of Tao

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Hmmm.…So what exactly is the Roon recommendation algorithm doing? I didn’t want to bring my personal background into this, but since it’s relevant, I have worked in AI research for 35 years (long before the tech companies got interested in AI). Recommendation algorithms by and large fit very simple statistical models to usage data. In short: they are dumb!

Geek discussion warning: let’s take Netflix as an example. You have a giant matrIx whose rows are users and whose columns are movies. The matrix entries are ratings. The matrix is extremely sparse, as most entries are zero. There are hundreds of thousands of programs to watch. Each user of Netflix barely watches a tiny percentage of the available choices. In this formulation, the recommendation problem is called matrix completion. Seems a hopeless problem: only a tiny percentage of entries are non-zero. Enter some cool math on what is called low-rank matrix completion. This assumption allows you to fill in the missing entries. I will skip the math — it involves ideas related to compressed sensing that incidentally can be used to create efficient digital codecs far better than FLAC.

But, here’s the main point. The Roon recommendation algorithm, like the Netflix method, has no clue what it is recommending. Books, movies, music, shopping behavior on Amazon — all use the same technology. All it cares about is the user data, which is just a highly sparse matrix. The algorithm cares nothing about the content. It knows nothing of the content.

So, unlike the FM music host, who is a trained professional in classical music or jazz, the Roon algorithm, like the Netflix algorithm is ”artificially stupid”. Next time you hear an article on AI, mentally replace the word “intelligence” with “stupidity” and you’ll get an accurate picture of the current state of the technology (I say this as someone who has spent his entire career in the field). We’d like to create an artificial music or movie critic, a program that actually listens to music or watches movies and forms its opinions. We have no clue how to do this since it involves solving the AI problem, which no matter what the hype you hear on the web, is many decades away from being solved.

If we used hi-fi shows as a guide there’s probably more risk of a ‘stupid’ artificial music selection by some Audiophile Intelligences as there is ever using a random selection by your more traditional Artificial one :eek:
 

Tuckia

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If we used hi-fi shows as a guide there’s probably more risk of a ‘stupid’ artificial music selection by some Audiophile Intelligences as there is ever by a random selection by your more traditional Artificial one :eek:
And the world will suffer because idiots are listening to bad music…

I think we are mixing important topics with benign ones. Ditto heads have been a problem for millennia. AI didn’t create this phenomenon, but it could make it worse.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Interestingly, how long do you think it will be before we have advertisements on Roon? Let’s face it, Roon can’t survive long on user fees. Even the mighty Netflix is facing a bleak future and now introducing advertisements. I love Roon for its convenience, and hope they survive, as I hope Qobuz will survive, but as some one who has been around a long time and seen plenty of companies come and go, enjoy Qobuz and Roon while they are around. Don’t count on them being around forever. Even giants like Meta are grasping for survival right now. I am in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is currently in the worst recession it has known in decades. Hundreds of thousands of folks are being laid off. Twitter is an advanced state of meltdown and on life support. The mighty tech industry has lost 3 trillion dollars in market cap this year. And things are only going to get worse. The real recession has yet to start, in 2023 when the interest rate increases start biting into every sector of the economy (including high end streaming).

So, I like and enjoy Roon, but I’m hanging on to my obsolete silver and vinyl discs that I can still use when streaming music craters (but I hope to God it doesn’t).
Roon is just music management software. no rights fees or bandwidth involved. that's Quboz and Tidal. so their costs are modest. and the hardware companies have a vested interest. not any big suck out of operating cash. and Roon can stay at a particular maintenance level and not push things if things get tight. mostly their product is sold with the hardware. all levels of hardware.

i could see the content providers coming and going possibly as that's where the subscriptions might ebb and flow relative to cost structure. i could see some users eliminating either Tidal or Quboz to tighten their belts, but not ditching Roon. and they might purchase lower cost hardware..........with Roon. that's the great part of streaming......bang for the buck. cheaper than going to the movies, or eating at a restaurant.

worst case for Roon is a hardware company or group of companies would acquire them.

observe that Taiko has essentially created their own Roon. so the scale of investment has to be reasonable.....not taking anything away from the Taiko efforts on that direction. it's heroic.
 
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Elliot G.

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Interesting remark Elliot. I agree with you as regards file replay with the Wadax reference components. But I was really amazed how good cd’s can actually sound when one uses a good cd-transport in combination with the Wadax reference dac and raise the performance of the cd-transport significantly with high quality footers and platforms (and yes, I raised the performance of the server in a similar way, albeit I used RevOpods for the server in stead of the Hifistay Absolute Point footers that I am employing for the cd-transport). After this experience I am not so sure anymore that high quality file reply ‘beats’ high quality cd-reply under all or most circumstances. But of that is of course just my opinion based on only one comparison, while I have not yet heard the Wadax reference server with its dedicated PSU.
I don't have a PSU yet and they probably wont arrive until early 2023 however if that improves what I already have, and it should, then the difference or gap will IMO only widen. I sometimes wonder what people are listening to with all these remakes, high res and other redone music from the originals since IMO they mostly are just not better , different perhaps, better not for me. I do wonder what people are actually listening for and too with many of these items.
 

the sound of Tao

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And the world will suffer because idiots are listening to bad music…

I think we are mixing important topics with benign ones. Ditto heads have been a problem for millennia. AI didn’t create this phenomenon, but it could make it worse.
Much truth in that… I was thinking it’s the human derived metadata tagging in combination with my own (also human kinda) previous choices that are determining the options that come to me when in Roon radio but I’m certainly no tech in this… either way I get much good previously unknown to me music being offered up in radio mode at any rate… but always the choice to play, continue, save or deny is not in the hands of any other idiot but myself :eek:. Just as in audio all the very best and worst of my choices are my own.
 
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Bonesy Jonesy

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I think one thing for me in favor of discs has been that I have collected them since they arrived at the end of 1982 and my dad put me in charge of finding them. Since then I have amassed 6K+ discs so I really do want to enjoy those even if it is a bit more work to load. I have collected great masterings from folks like Steve Hoffman, the MoFi guys, Classic Records, Sony, Glenn Meadows, Barry Diament, and many other great engineers.

I do appreciate streaming quite a bit now, especially with the Rossini Apex connected to an Ansuz switch. Can't beat it for convenience and the ability to build and share playlists and when on Roon explore new albums.

But there is still something wonderful about those little silver discs.
And the big black and multicoloured vinyl discs !
 
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Tuckers

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Re: Using Roon in your car: Roon 2.0 has a new mobile app called ARC for Android and Apple that allows you to stream your library to those devices. You can select the quality that it streams in, up to I think 24/192, though you have to pay for that heavy bandwidth through a cell plan somehow. So you can conceivably connect your iPhone or Android to your cars system and have Roon there. I haven't tested ARC yet.

Regarding Ron's original question, here are my ideas. I've been playing local files through a media server since I sold my Levinson 31.5 CD transport some 17 years ago. I was however at that time working building computer based streaming hardware and software, so that made sense. I was happy to give up the transport, as a certain glare, shallowness and brittleness that I always associated with digital went with that transport (and the media servers we were developing fixed). Now that media servers and DACs have improved exponentially I am curious to see what this new attraction is to CD playback. I still have a thousand of those discs around.

Today I still play mostly local files, though I can use streaming to discover new music, I don't listen to AI based mixes much at all. I find music by reading about it, YouTube videos, and old fashioned randomness. Anytime I take a shine to an album, I spend the time, effort and expense to track down the files so that I may possess it. It is sheer acquisitiveness on my part. I do generally prefer the sonics of a local file, but its not a big difference.

For my own well worn biases, I'm skeptical of adding any high quality source via SPDIF or AES/EBU, as I've always heard digititis through those connections. This is for the large part why I haven't recently popped for a transport to investigate. I know that Everything has improved since those times, and it may not be a limiting factor, but those painful earful of memories persist. I do know that my own customized digital paths based on a media server, a Roon endpoint (Lumin U2 mini) and Holo May as the basis is certainly giving me what I crave in quality for playback. And monthly I make more progress, whether it is in the Ethernet, the Fiber, the cabling, the EMI treatments, or good old fashioned voodoo, there is so much more to do that makes satisfactory progress towards my version of Nirvana.
 

the sound of Tao

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Listening now to Colin Vallon Trio album Danse from 2017 thanks to a previous Roon radio suggestion… here is track 1 Sisyphe.


My puppy Cleo gives it 5 stars… but she is a bit less dogmatic than some about the nature of various digital transports…

4699E070-74E6-4440-B3DE-0F8544E733BE.jpeg
 

Tuckers

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My puppy Cleo gives it 5 stars… but she is a bit less dogmatic than some about the nature of various digital transports…
You gotta look at the direction of the guide hairs on her muzzle :)
 
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wil

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Hmmm.…So what exactly is the Roon recommendation algorithm doing? I didn’t want to bring my personal background into this, but since it’s relevant, I have worked in AI research for 35 years (long before the tech companies got interested in AI). Recommendation algorithms by and large fit very simple statistical models to usage data. In short: they are dumb!

Geek discussion warning: let’s take Netflix as an example. You have a giant matrIx whose rows are users and whose columns are movies. The matrix entries are ratings. The matrix is extremely sparse, as most entries are zero. There are hundreds of thousands of programs to watch. Each user of Netflix barely watches a tiny percentage of the available choices. In this formulation, the recommendation problem is called matrix completion. Seems a hopeless problem: only a tiny percentage of entries are non-zero. Enter some cool math on what is called low-rank matrix completion. This assumption allows you to fill in the missing entries. I will skip the math — it involves ideas related to compressed sensing that incidentally can be used to create efficient digital codecs far better than FLAC.

But, here’s the main point. The Roon recommendation algorithm, like the Netflix method, has no clue what it is recommending. Books, movies, music, shopping behavior on Amazon — all use the same technology. All it cares about is the user data, which is just a highly sparse matrix. The algorithm cares nothing about the content. It knows nothing of the content.

So, unlike the FM music host, who is a trained professional in classical music or jazz, the Roon algorithm, like the Netflix algorithm is ”artificially stupid”. Next time you hear an article on AI, mentally replace the word “intelligence” with “stupidity” and you’ll get an accurate picture of the current state of the technology (I say this as someone who has spent his entire career in the field). We’d like to create an artificial music or movie critic, a program that actually listens to music or watches movies and forms its opinions. We have no clue how to do this since it involves solving the AI problem, which no matter what the hype you hear on the web, is many decades away from being solved.
AI may be dumb. That’s why it’s best if used with the hopefully intelligent human. I don’t need the AI help on Roon. It’s just kind of fun to see what pops up sometimes. And then I do the exploring from there on my own.

Roon just makes the exploration process exceedingly more efficient and rewarding. If I’m exposed to a new artist, in whatever genre, I can easily explore all the branches of who they played with and the people that have influenced then.

Without Roon, I could just Google all the same information as well. It would just be more cumbersome.

If you want the input of a knowledgeable radio guide, you have access to stations all over the globe. I heard Bob Dylan was doing radio a few years ago and diving deep into his knowledge of music. That’s kind of amazing.
 

Lee

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Kingrex

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It's funny how the thread went from a $1000 CD to Wadax.

I like to compare products on a value basis. If we want to look at a realistic transport such as a Jays Audio unit priced at $5000, what sort of streaming system would we be comparing it too. Lets make sure to include the modem, router and switch as well as any power supplies. Plus the cabling between these devices to the DAC.

In a $5000 price category, I don't think there are many streamer that would compare to the Jays Transport. I believe we would be looking at a high quality Endpoint.

Then we have to consider the DAC. The Jays transport utilizes the SPDIF/AES input. The streamer uses the USB. I hear time and time again its diffucult to isolate and power a USB card compared to SPDIF/AES. And USB cables are fsr more expensive than SPDIF.

I have not tried the Jays transport, but the maker of my DAC says hands down the Jays outperforms any streamer. Even with the latest JCat USB card powered internally with a dedicated power supply.

How much all this changes when you step into a $50K DAC and $35k streamer I don't know. But the OP was looking for premium sound quality on a budget. Not ease of use. Sound quality. I would make a nod to a good transport over a streamer at the entry level of market.

FWIW, a friend of mine has a transport and he says there is a limitless supply of varied CD for sale in used shops for $2. So the media is fairly inexpensive. And with the push to streaming and vinyl, will most likely become more affordable as time goes on.
 
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Lee

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@ tima Here's another


Looks like you can use to Roon to hear music in your car. It does seem over wrought in terms of connections and devices involved -- in effect its computer networking with a non-driver-friendly user interface. I'm guessing there other choices

I was thinking maybe a 'radio' with a Roon feature as Sirius has. I wish the car makers would put CD players back in cars. Mine will take an SD card but no CD.
The Qobuz and Tidal apps integrate very well on CarPlay in my Porsche.
 
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Lee

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It's funny how the thread went from a $1000 CD to Wadax.

I like to compare products on a value basis. If we want to look at a realistic transport such as a Jays Audio unit priced at $5000, what sort of streaming system would we be comparing it too. Lets make sure to include the modem, router and switch as well as any power supplies. Plus the cabling between these devices to the DAC.

In a $5000 price category, I don't think there are many streamer that would compare to the Jays Transport. I believe we would be looking at a high quality Endpoint.

Then we have to consider the DAC. The Jays transport utilizes the SPDIF/AES input. The streamer uses the USB. I hear time and time again its diffucult to isolate and power a USB card compared to SPDIF/AES. And USB cables are fsr more expensive than SPDIF.

I have not tried the Jays transport, but the maker of my DAC says hands down the Jays outperforms any streamer. Even with the latest JCat USB card powered internally with a dedicated power supply.

How much all this changes when you step into a $50K DAC and $35k streamer I don't know. But the OP was looking for premium sound quality on a budget. Not ease of use. Sound quality. I would make a nod to a good transport over a streamer at the entry level of market.

FWIW, a friend of mine has a transport and he says there is a limitless supply of varied CD for sale in used shops for $2. So the media is fairly inexpensive. And with the push to streaming and vinyl, will most likely become more affordable as time goes on.
I can comment interactions on a $40K DAC, lol. The Rossini Transport is also excellent. I have very high quality streaming now but this transport keeps up with it. The Rossini sends data to the dac with dual AES which allows reference Super Audio playback.

I don’t feel the need for a separate streamer at this level of sound. But it might be fun to borrow one and see what, if any, differences there are.
 

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