Current quality of Rune

A few people claim Roon sound quality not up to par, most don't have issue. My argument is regardless of music player being used, streams should equal sound quality of cd's played via a quality cd transport, or rips on a hard drive. I've run Audirvana and Roon, both are capable of this.

I agree a one box solution can equal or surpass a two box solution. At issue is the quality of the output or interface (usb, I2S, spdif, etc) of streamer. For instance if one is using a laptop for Roon, no brainer to adopt a two box solution, this means adding usb isolation devices which also go by the name renderer, endpoint, streamer;  Sonore MicroRendu is one example of these devices, many other manufacturers as well. These devices isolate computer noise that travels along usb cable from contaminating dac. End result is lower noise floor, greater resolution.  This is exactly why Roon offers a two box solution, therefore, Roon Core on computer, Roon Endpoint on the outboard usb device, computer now goes by the name server, no longer a streamer since it only serves the core to the actual music player streamer which is the Roon Endpoint. Limitation of Audirvana is that it can only be a one box solution, has no separate Endpoint last time I looked. I'm not surprised people have glitches when using Roon with general purpose computers, Roon requires a relatively large measure of processor resources,having other apps and such running on computer can overtax processors leading to all kinds of issues. As these music players continue to evolve they only tax processors more greatly, the user interfaces, analysis of huge libraries, dsp use up resources, you best have a powerful processor, large RAM for a glitch free experience.

Moving into a dedicated streamer may or may not preclude the need for the above device, depends on quality of interface within streamer. Highest quality streamers go a step further by further optimizing these interfaces within the streamer, in this case no outboard devices likely needed. Everything determined by how far one wants to take it, streaming can be a complex or simple undertaking, optimization of streaming interfaces and many other streaming components extremely variable.

Example of taking things to the extreme, https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/introducing-olympus-olympus-i-o-a-new-perspective-on-modern-music-playback.37939/

@sls883 You're correct on everything, bridge in dac is endpoint or actual streamer. Agree with the others here, Innuos should be superior.

Also agree turning off many of these 'extras' with Roon is good, no volume leveling, throttle library analysis, no dsp. All these extras only add to work processor in streamer has to do, adds noise and may cause glitches if processor stressed. This also part of reason why general purpose computers not good as streamers, the operating systems alone take up far more processor resources than need be, dedicated streamers have operating systems optimized for streaming only, processor barely working which means low noise and no glitches. And I could go on and on about optimizing interfaces such as ethernet, usb, I2S, etc. general service computers don't give a crap about any of this, serious audio streamers pay great attention to all this.

Don't know if this still holds true for Innuos, but Innuos used to be in minimal processor low noise camp, other streamer manufacturers are in fast, powerful processor low latency camp. Roon requires more processor resources, works and sounds better with fast processor low latency camp streamers. Makes sense that sense app sounds better in Innuos streamer, that app designed specifically for their philosophy.

@pourdecisions and others using Roon dsp, you can do far better dsp with HQPlayer. One of my streamers allows 1/2 hour auditions of HQPlayer, so this compared to Roon no contest, Roon opaque, artificial sound quality. One has to be aware using dsp requires tons of processor resources which may stress processor,result noise, glitches.

@flkin I have Euphony OS on custom build streamer, also have Sonore OpticalRendu streamer. Running in bridged mode, custom build contains Roon core, OR Roon Endpoint. I can also go Roon core on custom, Stylus endpoint on OR. Finally in unbridged mode, custom build only streamer, OR out of system, full Roon or full Stylus. I won't go through sound quality with each option, but running bridged mode, Roon core on custom build, Roon endpoint on OpticalRendu best sound quality, betters Stylus endpoint. As for running full Stylus, which I can do with and without the optical conversion setup with the Sonore equipment, user interface with Stylus terrrible vs Roon with my huge library. This to the point don't care if  Stylus does sound a bit better. I can only say improvements in Roon sound quality directly correlate with system improvements, no sins of commission I can detect.

My theory as to Roon sound quality variations is Roon will sound best with powerful processor/low latency streamers since Roon requires much from processor resources. All the conveniences of Roon demands work from processor, work means noise. With my processor, 9 cores I'm often using  only 1 or 2% of processor resources, this means low noise.