What features of Roon are worth the price? Compensate for Roon’s poorer sound quality?

[caesar]

What features of Roon are you guys using ? do they compensate for Roo?s poorer sound quality?

 

[howiebrou]

As a decade long user of Sooloos, I love the Roon GUI. To me a piece of software without a good GUI is worthless however good the sound. I don't have the time to fart around with difficult to use software interfaces. Interfacing with streaming apps is vital as I rarely buy digital music anymore. Roon Radio is also a great feature.

 

[DSkip]

1. User Interface is second to none, as howie mentions.
2. It does have DSP
3. If a signal is too hot and clips, you can reduce the output
4. It is the premier software so most brands will be supported.

 

[jespera]

What features of Roon are you guys using ? do they compensate for Roo?s poorer sound quality?

Sq wise, whats better than roon?

I run roon core on a mac book. And then a number of headless roon clients (hifi berry rpi’s streamers/dacs/amps + one auralic aries g2) throughout the house. All connected using google wifi mesh.

Source is primarely tidal.

Tbh, im actually mainly annoyed with the stability of the system but i havent yet figured out whether its my mac core, roon, tidal, or my wifi thats the problem.
I dont think its the wifi though.

Also im not impressed with the search facilities on roon/tidal.

We like the fact that we can rock the whole house and the garden too. Kids are annoyed that they cant stream their youtube ufti-ufti “music” to the system. Cant say that bothers me so much.

Sq wise its ok, but not much better than that. That said, ive never heard any computer music system that really did it for me.

If the answer to my question involves linux programming, and loss of convenience then i may pass.

Jesper

 

[caesar]

Gentlemen , appreciate the replies so far.

soundwise, dCS app, for one, sounds better than roon. Hands down. My in unnous friends say the same thing.

 

[caesar]

How good is the roon recommendation engine? Is it better than, say, the Tidal app?

 

[howiebrou]

How good is the roon recommendation engine? Is it better than, say, the Tidal app?

I like it. I've found quite a few nice albums and artists that way.

 

[HughP3]

What features of Roon are you guys using ? do they compensate for Roo?s poorer sound quality?

thats a blanket statement that i personally dont agree with as i have compared my 24 bit files to roon/tidal mqa. no difference to me.

 

[Afveep]

The ability to integrate Qobuz and Tidal albums with my local files into one “Library“ is the most powerful feature of Roon to me. It provides a seamless experience. I may not own every Pink Floyd album (ok, almost) but they will all show up when I do a search. If there’s another non-proprietary app that does this, let me know.

 

[gds7368]

The ability to integrate Qobuz and Tidal albums with my local files into one “Library“ is the most powerful feature of Roon to me. It provides a seamless experience. I may not own every Pink Floyd album (ok, almost) but they will all show up when I do a search. If there’s another non-proprietary app that does this, let me know.

Totally agree. When using the Aurender Conductor app I have to search the hard drive first (always sounsd better, have heard good streaming but none that beats the HD version), then Qobuz, then Tidal ... all separately. It's a pain.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only time I saw Roon mentioned as having poor SQ was when Extreme owners detected deteriorations on updates. I've spoken to plenty of audiophiles who stream using very well regarded servers who don't see this as an issue at all.

 

[DSkip]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only time I saw Roon mentioned as having poor SQ was when Extreme owners detected deteriorations on updates. I've spoken to plenty of audiophiles who stream using very well regarded servers who don't see this as an issue at all.

How many have experienced software outside of Roon? Most build their streamers around this software and don’t have other options that are friendly.

I am not trying to be argumentative or accusatory. Every unit I’ve played with that has Roon and another software has proven to sound better on the other software. When it comes to user experience though, Roon is superb.

 

[jespera]

I dont doubt software is very important. Sceptics can try comparing tidal through the tidal app and through audiavana.

For roon itself ive experienced significant differences btw different rasberry pi implementations. This i attribute to different software on the rpi’s as the hardware is very similar.

On pcs Ive tried a few alternatives jriver, audiavana. At the time they didnt seem to better roon.

In this thread ive heard dcs software mentioned. Does that work for non dcs products? What else? Linn’s kinsky? Also do these alternatives work for headless streamers like rpi?
And with tidal, qobuz, etc?

Another computer audio black hole ...

 

[christoph]

Every unit I’ve played with that has Roon and another software has proven to sound better on the other software.

What other softwares sound better than roon in your experience?

 

[abeidrov]

It is always a software and hardware combo, that is a source to the playback. I compared Lampi server with Roon + HQPlayer to Antipodes DX with just Roon and Antipodes was better. I also compared Roon to Mpd player on my Antipodes EX/CX and did not find any difference. To say that Roon always sounds worse than other software players is simply not true imho.

 

[matthias]

do they compensate for Roo?s poorer sound quality?

Never

Matt

 

[caesar]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only time I saw Roon mentioned as having poor SQ was when Extreme owners detected deteriorations on updates. I've spoken to plenty of audiophiles who stream using very well regarded servers who don't see this as an issue at all.

From personal experience, dCS mosaic blows away Rune... And also innuos app (according to my innous friends) is much better than roon also... Those two are much simpler apps....some say aurender is better also, and I imagine there are others also....

it seems guys are spending thousand$ on digital gadgets and tweaks, when the first thing they should do is try Rune against their app...

 

[matthias]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only time I saw Roon mentioned as having poor SQ was when Extreme owners detected deteriorations on updates. I've spoken to plenty of audiophiles who stream using very well regarded servers who don't see this as an issue at all.

Please read this post

Building a DIY Music Server

audiophilestyle.com

and the other posts on page 69 of this thread and it is pretty clear what Roon is doing.

Thanks

Matt

 

[DSkip]

What other softwares sound better than roon in your experience?

Auralic, Lumin, and Innuos for starters. I have used a computer, laptop, and Innuos as cores. I have also done other comparisons but they were not solely software variable so I am not including those.

Edit: I have tested these across multiple devices within those brands as well, for what it’s worth.

 

[cjf]

So it sounds like the original post is comparing Roon's SQ to DCS's home-brew player.

I for one wouldn't expect anything less if I bought into the DCS eco-system. If they didn't provide a very special piece of software to go along with all that kit that blows away the competition I would be very disappointed.

For everyone else though who likes to mix and match their gear you would be hard pressed to find a better music playback option that betters Roon...IMO of course.

Yes Roon does kinda bug me in some ways (The whole Apple'ish approach to updates and dumbing down the interface and tweaking options) but not enough to go elsewhere.

I use Roon for DSP volume control, Sample Rate Conversion (Upsample everything to 24/192) and Room Correction. I feed its Convolution engine Audiolense filters which integrate my subs and mains seamlessly.

Not sure if any of that is possible with the DCS solution but if not you may be short changing yourself by whatever small differences it may have over Roon in the SQ department...if any.