Aurender vs. Roon

Thanks thyname.  The dealer let me use a Roon Nucleus until the Zen 3 is in. I love how simple this unit is to use with a Roon and a Tidal. Took me 5 minutes! Nice. 

However, the sound is just average and nothing special.  My old tricked out Windows based computer with SOTM Usb card sounded better for sure. Sure hope the Zen 3 is a huge step up as I already sold my computer/server. 

I wish a had a LPS to power the Nucleus. I bet that would help greatly. 

I want to feed my MSB Renderer with the best sounding Ethernet feed possible. I am looking at the isolated Ethernet approach used in the Aurender ACS10 and the Zenith MK3.

Based strictly on sound over isolated ethernet, which of these three are best:

• Aurender ACS10
  
• Zenith MK3 using Innuos’s software
• Zenith MK3 using Roon

Thanks.

Paul

If all I care about is sound quality (not interface) and I am looking to feed a MSB Renderer (no DSP use) overt ethernet, would people recommend Roon run on Innuos Zenith MK3 with isolated ethernet or the new Aurender ACS10 with double isolated ethernet?

Again the application is a server with ethernet output to Dac Renderer with no DSP where sound quality is only criteria.

Thanks!

I had an old NUC around I hadn't been using - about a year ago I bought a Macbook Pro and the need for a windows based system is no longer needed.  Today I updated the BIOS, formatted the drive and made the NUC into a Room Rock.  I have the Room Rock connected to a Synology NAS drive, 2 4TB drives used exclusively for music.   The library is slow to analyze and I have had to squelch the library processes to improve performance, but other than that I have had no issues with streaming.  

I have integrated my Sonos Connects  and will use those in secondary listening areas.  For my main listening room I haven't completely figured that out.  I have a resolution cantata that is not Room compliant, but that doesn't mean it won't work - just not tested.   I will experiment with that and see if I can integrate.  

My initial thought after 1 day is it is a lot of $ for the info Roon provides. It definitely improves upon the streaming experience, but it is still streaming and I find myself putting the music on and not using Roon's features.  

I suppose streaming will never be as intimate as vinyl where I consciously grab a record, choose side A or B, look at the cover art, read the liners and then either flip, put away, or chose a new record in 15-20 minutes. 

I spoke to soon - After 4 hours of streaming I get a message similar to , "Roon lost control of the audio device". I simply hit play 
again and music started to stream.  Doing a quick google search this seems to occur quite often. I have 13 more days to analyze, but will not keep if Roon is at all fiddly.

In case anyone is interested, I was able to integrate Sonos connects without issue after messing with for a couple of days.  In short, connects should run wireless and not share the same router  (wired) as the Rock.  I am not sure why that is, but I found this piece of advice on another forum.   Also I changed the wireless channel of the connects.  Once those 2 steps occurred I have not had any issues.  IN fact, the queuing up of music is extremely fast, much faster than Sonos UI.  

Thus far I really like Roon.  

Now the dilemma of if I should get a  MQA/DSD capable DAC.