Sound quality of Roon


I am considering trying Roon.  I have been using my Bluesound Node but I am going to upgrade as I do enjoy streaming more and more using Tidal.  It is quite an investment to get a NUC or Nucleus and then have a separate tablet to control it all.
 

But apart from the cost I have read some people say Roon does not sound good.  Their streamer by blah blah sounds better.  Is this true?  For all that is required to use Roon, the hardware, the subscription and all, would Roon be popular if it made digital streaming sound bad?


I would love to hear people who have experience comment on this.  There is info on the Roon Labs discussion site but as you can imagine it is saying this is BS Roon sounds great.  I guess Roon as a software also has had updates, so maybe this is a thing that might have been true in the past?  

troidelover1499

Showing 1 response by arcee72

There is nothing wrong with the sound quality of Roon, on the contrary, when comparing the sound to Bluesound I prefer Roon. I’ve had Auralic G1, Lumin U1 and Bluesound Node and Bluesound in the NAD M12 as comparison. Always found Roon sounding the best. I’ve used a Raspberry PI with HifiBerry hat with great results provided both powered seperately with high end power supplies. Then I had a Metrum Ambre and loved its musicality and ease of use. It sounded way better than Lumin U1, the U1 was too dark in my system. Now I use SOtM sMS-200ultra neo and recently made it sound even better with tx-USBultra reclocker. Roon is just sounding better as streaming solutions improve. Adding a good switch in the chain like Melco S100 or Uptone EtherREGEN makes it even better. Yes there is better but only if you move way up the streamer line to top end Pink Faun or Taiko Extreme streamers, but that’s out of my price range.