Roon vs OS and Native Players - Impact on SQ?


My conclusion / assumption is these designers maximized (or maybe "tuned / shaped") their native players to get best sound versus doing a pass through of the Roon player. 
 

@buickwilson posted the above statement in the following thread, which I’ve been wondering about for a while. There’s been countless posts from Innuos members stating that their streaming experience is better through the Innuos Sense App in comparison to Roon. I also found this to be true with BluOS in comparison to Roon and Tidal Connect (and naturally Spotify Connect).

I now run Roon through an OpticalRendu via the Sonic Orbiter OS which does not have a native player. As a Roon user I’m wondering:

A. Have other Roon users experienced an uptick in sound quality when they’ve completely stepped away from Innuos or BluOS native players (and others) while using Roon on an OS that does not have a native player - like Sonic Orbiter for example?

B. As a Roon user, how much of a bottleneck are we talking about in terms of diminished SQ when comparing Roon to Aurender, Lumin, and Innuos native players?

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Showing 2 responses by audphile1

When I owned Auralic Aries G1 I compared Roon to Lightning DS. I cancelled Roon subscription. I restarted it later in with Lumin U1 Mini and actually preferred Roon over the native Lumin software in both sonics and UX.

It depends on the design and implementation of the OS. For example Auralic used SSD cache, albeit not huge in capacity but enough to be able to leverage it in their implementation and processing. In addition to whatever else the proprietary firmware was responsible for in making the difference. 

@mclinnguy 

Roon is rounder, warmer, and more forgiving.

In a less favourable Roon flavour:

Roon has a more opaque bass, a congested midrange, and rolled off highs.

that’s pretty much in line with my observations when I owned Auralic Aries G1. I would also say that the flatter and narrower soundstage I noticed with Roon is most likely a bi-product of the above. The UI Roon offers is absolutely the best though.
Nothing compares to it.