I am completing a four years project to rip 5500 CDs to a server, having taken the time to ensure bit-perfect rips. The rips have been done for over a year. The data editing is the time sink now, but I listen to this hard-earned convenience. I also have used Tidal HiFi for the past five years or so, both discretely and from within Roon. I bought the Roon perpetual license maybe three years ago.
Completing this project means choosing my endpoints. I have to get one server's music to two complete hifi systems and I'm not running cable all over the house. I achieved my breakthrough there. I'll circle back to that. Digital streaming has been a tertiary source for me, analog vinyl being primary; spinner CDs being secondary before streaming. So while I got this all organized I've just been streaming 16/44 content through AppleTV, which converts everything to 16/48. It sounded fine; not stellar; not really bad in any way. I further improved the ATV streaming by using the iFi SPDIF iPurifier dejitterer and clock between the ATV TOSLINK output and the DAC input. Clearly better while I got the rest of the project done.
Now the project shifts to making digital streaming a peer source to spun CDs and vinyl.
I am always scanning for DACs and will make another push for trials in that category. They are like phono cartridges. None are the full truth and nothing but the truth, so you look for the more objective ones (or some people look for their preferred colorations). For the past several years I've been using MHDT Pagoda and Pagoda Balanced on the two systems, lightly modified, and using (via adapters) CCa tubes in place of the stock 5670 family. Makes a large difference. The Pagoda is a 24/192 R2R ladder DAC built around the revered BB PCM1704 chip, with discrete transistor (no op-amp) I/V conversion and a tube buffer output. It's a challenger to giants in objectivity, resolution and tone; no DSD supported.
When I first got Roon a few years ago, I was reasonably impressed with it. I'm a career software professional, so I agree the UX/UI is better than any other music management software on the market, but of course there are things I would change if I were the product manager or leading the company. No matter, it's good in that respect, and any other changes I made would be criticized by someone else with different ideas. Not worth arguing about.
On SQ, I initially had no real qualms about Roon because ..... well .... it's all streamed digital. None of it sounded spot on but Roon was pretty good. Sometime Tidal direct from its own app sounded better but sometimes not so much. I just didn't focus on it much. Streaming from Roon was my tertiary source.
Recently, I started making decisions about my endpoints. Thinking on this evolved continuously over the past four years. I thought initially I'd run wired to the Zu Druid system which is physically close to the server, and go wireless to the Zu Definition system for which a wired connection would be a pita. So I focused on deciding about a true high-res streamer to elbow aside the music streaming role AppleTV has been shouldering. After a wide-ranging survey, I bought an Auralic Aries G1. There are three particularly great features in the Aries G1. First, Auralic put great effort into Wifi, to the point they recommend Wifi as the connection of first resort even if you can easily run Ethernet to the G1. The reason is they've implemented Wifi to be quieter than wired Ethernet. Second, this streamer includes a 1gb FIFO cache for any incoming digital signal. Anything inputted gets cached and dejittered. They have two Femto clocks, one for USB, the other for the remaining digital I/O. Jitter from any input effectively vanishes. Third, Auralic views MQA as what it is -- a compression technology -- not consistent with highest fidelity. So they developed their own alternate decoding simulation for MQA content and it's successful in my listening.
My mhdt Pagoda DACs have sounded truthful, dynamic, energetic, tone-dense and authentic for the years I've had them (and the Atlantis) in place. The streamer matters more. The Auralic G1 alone puts streaming digital in a peer position with other sources. Better yet, since playing a spinning CD is just loading data into the 1gb cache for recolocking and dejittering, EVERY CD sounds better. The drive doesn't matter. You just put a cheap USB computer optical drive on it. But I have them all ripped now anyway. My disc player is relegated to Bluray only.
The Aries G1 impressed me enough to get an Aries G2.1. I put the G1 on the Zu Druid system, and the G2.1 on the Suz Definition system. Honestly, I can take my damn time evaluating any DACs to succeed the MHDT Pagodas.
WRT Roon SQ: I've had JRiver and futzed with a few other applications over the past 10 years. Most are bogus crap from a software integrity and UX/UI standpoint. Life's too short. Roon is visually beautiful and aggregates a ton of contextual content about whatever you're listening to. It's the product of music lovers. Can't fault that. However, I agree Roon SQ has been eroding. It's not falling off a cliff by any means, but something they are doing is shaving away aspects of SQ.
What sounds better? Conclusively, music played from the Auralic Lightning DS app controlling the Auralic streamers. No question better than Roon. The Auralic streamers are Roon endpoints, seamlessly recognized and connected. And more to the point, Tidal Hifi played from within the Lightning DS app blows away same played from within Roon. You can only get the Auralic's MQA emulation running Tidal from within Lightning DS. It's a game-changer for Tidal MQA/Masters.
There's another thing to be aware of regarding Roon and Tidal: Roon alienated me with a recent release that continues in the current version. I carefully bit-perfect-ripped 5500 CDs to a disc and imported that database to Roon Core. Well, now, if I give Roon the user/pw to my Tidal Hifi account, it *substitutes Tidal Hifi tracks for every track I ripped that Tidal also has!* You can't turn this off. Very many of the Tidal tracks do not sound as good as my ripped 16/44 tracks. So I have segregated Tidal from my ripped library. I play Tidal (initially when I discovered this Roon abomination, I played from the Tidal app) from within Lightning DS. I play my ripped collection from Roon. This weekend I will get Lightning DS to "see" my 4TB of ripped files on the network and routinely play from there.
Will I abandon Roon? No, because of their excellent content aggregation. Plus, you cannot edit data in Lightning DS; you can in Roon. I bought the perpetual license, so no point in abandoning it. I'll use it when convenient (guests) and for maintenance. But for digital, I'll be listening from Auralic Lightning DS when I'm the operator. It sounds better; seems more stable (no crashes) and it's snappy.
But the net takeaway here is that the streamer is a vital choice. I've had many DACs on audition over the past decade. Even hardwired. Nothing has made as much of a convincing difference as these Auralic streamers. And keep in mind jitter is a bigger problem at the input of delta-sigma DACs than R2Rs. For a lot of the hifi digital world streamer choice will be even more critical than for me.
Phil