I ran a highly modified Mac Mini as my streamer some years ago, I heard pretty much same thing you heard when comparing Audirvana to Roon, Audirvana sound a bit more analog like vs Roon. Moving on to today, now running much different streaming setup with Roon, my setup doesn't allow Audirvana integration. In any case Roon with present setup is easily superior to that previous setup, can't say I have any problem with Roon. I achieve best sq with Roon by disabling things like volume leveling, library analysis, no dsp.
Is Roon The Best Sounding Option For Us?
I am a bit hesitant to post this question, but it is based on experiences I had in my system this weekend.
I have a lifetime subscription to Roon I bought a couple of years back, so I do have a financial interest in it excelling. I also bought a copy of Audirvana 3.5 which is now a legacy platform. In the past I have found small but interesting differences between them, but ran Roon for the last couple of years.
Now my computer system may be the issue here. I am using a late 2014 Mac Mini with PI Audio power cord built for use with the Mini. I am planning on a streamer sometime this year, but do not know what or when.
what I am finding sound wise is that Roon presents as more precise, and superior at fine detail. But it sounds compact and closed in with a reduction in acoustic space. On the other hand, Audirvana does space so so much better, and the music feels like it flows better with texture and harmonic decay. The differences are not subtle, and it surprises me they exist.
Roon is the 800 pound gorilla in our hobby now. But I wonder if others have done any comparisons to alternate music playback forums and what have you found? I know Roon should only be a origination system, and can run in front of a streamer as a library, and that digital is just packets of information, but its hard to deny what is in front of your face when both programs are run one after the other. . I wonder if it has become a hardware problem where the demands of the Roon system has outstripped the capabilities of the computer.
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@sns Any chance you would share what digital rig you are running now? |
I have an Aurender N200 and I can listen to a Qobuz HR track either using Roon or using the Qobuz connection on the Aurender Conductor app. The track played via Conductor sounds noticeably "better" (clearer, etc) than using Roon. I've made sure DSP is off on Roon and as far as I can tell, the comparison is apples to apples except for Conductor vs Roon. |
Have not seen a single person on this site that likes roon over the conductor or sense app for sound quality. |
g kelly we have had roon servers, from several companies and Innous servers and Aurender. Roons sound quality is directly proportional to the device running roon
the Innous server running roon sounded better then Aurender as per sense sounding better didn't find that to be better and Roons interface is far superior to sense if your roon isn't sounding great try a different server.
Dave and Troy Audio Intellect NJ server specialists |
Per @mapman Its quite logical to assume Roon may not be best music player app for every streamer. Roon requires more intensive use of streamer processor vs some other music player apps, speed/low latency which means more powerful processors likely needed. And then steamers also may have unique RAM, OS, LPS, etc, all which affect sound quality.
@neonknight I'm running custom build streamer on windows platform using Euphony operating system, using this as server only. Euphony OS specifically designed to use Roon or own proprietary music player called Stylus. Best sound quality for me is Roon core on this server, this in turn feeds Sonore OpticalRendu streamer via optical conversion, Sonore also runs Roon core. Euphony allows this two streamer setup via something called 'Bridged' mode, the idea is lower noise in each streamer via minimal use of processor resources. So this rather complex setup optimized for Roon has provided wonderful analog like digital streaming. It would be nice to have capability of integrating Audirvana, perhaps someday Euphony will develop a relationship with Audrivana. |
Get Roon BEHIND a fibre optic cable and you can then run Roon on any decent computer. I use a $500 DELL micro-computer that has no monitor | keyboard | mouse. I just RDP into the machine on the rare time I need to do something on the Roon Core server. Digital packets are not all the same. The 1's and 0's are represented by analog signals. Using fibre alleviates a lot of the network (Ethernet) gremlins that make various streaming components sound different. I also use a Sonore OpticalRendu as the poster above. Actually, I have 3 of them and can sell 1 since I now have finalized on 2 DACs. BTW - streamers do not sound the same. I had 3 tops of the line streamers in the house at one time and compared
When my opticaRendu dies I will get a Lumin U2 streamer. |