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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 4 responses by jbuhl

jbuhl's avatar
jbuhl
900 posts
 

I found the sound quality very flat in the Roon environment and having ....

Dont mean much without knowing  the set up details....

jbuhl's avatar
jbuhl
900 posts
 

When I ran ROON through a MAC mini to my Bryston Pi endpoint.  The soundstage was pancake flat compared to streaming directly through the Pi's  Manic Moose an MPD.  Moved the Core to an SGC with Sonic Orbiter, put in a Mesh Network node at the rig and got decent network cables and now ROON is on par with the direct stream to the Pi and MPD.   When you set the Pi to Roon Ready it shuts down MPD I do believe. 

 

 

jbuhl's avatar
jbuhl
900 posts
 

@mgrif104 

What was hosting the core?

jbuhl's avatar
jbuhl
900 posts
 

Another cool thing about ROON is the control app can function as an endpoint. Sometimes I will take a set of blue tooth headphones to bed a listen to a little music via the iPAD to relax. The desktop app the same, it sees my little Audio Engine D1 attached to my Mac and I can play my descent headphones if my work gets mindless enough.  Not to mention the new ARCH capability which I have not tried because I dont have my local files indexed in ROON. 

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