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About ready to give up on Roon and my streamer

Last December I started a thread to address the question of whether a true AES/EBU cable would sound better than a standard XLR when connecting my Sonnet Morpheus DAC to a Sonnet Hermes streamer. As the discussion evolved, (and in the end I abandoned both connections in favor of I2S via ethernet cable) I began sharing my trials and tribulations setting up Roon and getting it to work. Though I was finally successful and did get to spend some quality time streaming favorite music through Qobuz on the Roon platform, I've never been entirely happy with the sound. Apart from the headaches of getting everything to connect together every time I turn it on, I've also experienced some bizarre intermittent sound quality issues with Roon that I'm becoming very frustrated with. Sometimes it sounds pretty good, and sometimes it sounds tinny, shrill, and no stereo image. I haven't changed any settings anywhere, but something's clearly not getting processed correctly. At this point I'm tired of fighting with it.

What I'd really like to do is take Roon out of the equation entirely and connect directly to Qobuz through a streamer, but the Sonnet Hermes is designed to be a Roon endpoint and as far as I can tell, nothing more. If there's a way to get it to connect directly to Qobuz, I'd surely like to know about it. 

Meanwhile, I'm happy to take suggestions for a streamer in the $1K to 1.5K range (new or used, happy with either) that can do this. I really don't want anything with a built-in DAC, as I'm really happy with mine, despite some minor shortcomings in its array of input connections. 

Advice greatly appreciated. Thanks!

cooper52

Showing 1 response by mrotino

mrotino
65 posts
 

I own the Metrum ambre which is essentially the same as the Sonnet Hermes and also own the upgraded metrum onyx with latest DAC modules.  Cees who designs both the Onyx and Morpheus basically said the upgraded onyx sounds the same as the Sonnet Morpheus.

Anyway I've tried both Roon and Volumio and prefer the sound of Volumio using my above setup and I connect the ambre to the onyx via I2s.  It's easy to swap the small micro SD card inside the Hermes to either use Roon or Volumio.  I just burned the Volumio software onto a micro SD card from the Volumio website and it worked.  Volumio is definitely not as polished as Roon (less options) however it is much more lightweight and no need for an external computer or other device to hold the Roon core.  For me I don't need all of the stuff that Roon does and I preferred the sound quality of Volumio so it works for me.  I'm sure others will listen to both and say the sound quality is the same which could be true in their setup.

Anyway you can try Volumio to see if it sounds any better than Roon and there probably is a free introductory period  Technically Volumio is free but if you want to stream Tidal and Qobuz there is a yearly fee.

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