Made the Move and Not looking back!

Similar experience here with Auralic and their Lightning DS music management software. I had Roon - loved the interface and meta data. But, when I compared the exact same Qobuz files over Roon vs Lightning DS, (no processing -  so it was a fair comparison), I dropped my Roon subscription that day.  LDS sounded better. 

I’m guessing there are certain systems for which Roon is perfectly fine. And, there are some systems that are built around Roon.  But, I would never go back. Over LDS, music is much more open - there’s just more spatial information - depth and breadth.

As I thought about it more, it didn’t surprise me, though I’m sure the 1s and 0s crowd remains skeptical. Native music management systems are built around the architecture of the hardware. Buffers/cache etc are all optimized. Roon is like MSFT Windows. It has to run across all kinds of hardware. How can it be optimal for all systems?  Again, love the interface, but LDS is also more than good enough on that front. The quality of the music reproduction matters more to me.  As always, YMMV.

Best,

@boostedis 

You make a great point. However, as I stated in my previous post, I wasn’t using any DSP through Roon. The comparison I did was Auralic’s LDS playing a specific file and then Roon on my Auralic unit playing the exact same file. I tried multiple files. BTW-  I was running Roon Core on a souped up Mac Mini w/ a solid state hard drive, 16GB of ram exclusively dedicated to roon. Everything else was turned off.  It was the purest test I could do.  Auralic’s Lightning DS sounded significantly better than Roon and it was easily discernible. 

I get that many people love Roon. i, too, loved the interface and meta data. Those who claim their system sounds great using Roon - I’m sure they’re right. But the question they may not be answering is: does it sound as good as it could?  

If they’re satisfied, great. But, if they’re curious to wonder “what if?”, the only way to know is to compare both. 

Best,

@ghasley 

I upgraded to the Auralic from an Aurender N100H. The Auralic was significantly better. However, while I’ve  heard the more recent Aurender units - I haven’t had them in my system so I can’t comment on whether (or perhaps how much) better they may be. I’ve an open mind on such things.  I’m certain my Auralic unit can be bettered. Regardless, Roon was the bottleneck. And, I can imagine it would be the same for Aurender should they decide they need to offer Roon compatibility and as an alternative to their native conductor music management system.

I’ve also given a serious audition to the Grimm. I’ve considered it as it’s very nice, but it’s not a significant step up from what I have.