Sound quality of Roon

@kray agreed and I definitely employ static IP addresses in my LAN.  For all important devices anyway...streamers, switches, DAC/endpoints, processors, servers, etc.  That could be yet another reason ROCK has been incredibly stable for me.

When I first starting messing with Roon, I compared it to what I was using - JRiver hosted on my Win10 PC.  And the difference surprised me.  So I let my trial for Roon expire.  But bugs and tons of stupid DLNA issues with JRiver drove me batty.  It wouldn't find my Bridge every other time I tried to use it.  Songs would skip sections, others would cut off the final 30-60 seconds and start up another track after a 5-7 second delay.  But when it worked, JR sounded fantastic.  So I bit the bullet and purchased Roon Lifetime.  And after buying a new i10 NUC (not fanless but powered by a LPS), I went crazy on isolation to get rid of the garbage in the stream.  That eventually led me to a full LAN makeover from copper to fiber.  And I started putting in LPS's on the router, switches and fiber media converters (I run video streamers as well with awesome results).  Things sounded great after finally ridding the system of junk, so I just happily lived with it for many moons.  About a month ago, I decided to compare it to JRiver again (with it running on my Win10 PC).  I drug my feet with doing this because I knew I was going to like JR better and feel remorse for buying Roon.  Well it didn't happen that way at all.  They were virtually identical in sound now.  I say virtually because by the time I switched from one to the other, I was not able to discern any differences.  A stark contrast to how things were in the beginning.  So I am completely happy with Roon now :)  But everyone's journey is different and best you, or anyone can do is get a free trial and have a listen for yourself.  

@jji666 wrote: Sorry but I couldn’t disagree more with this.  Roon is great but those who post saying they’ve never had a problem are just lucky.  Plenty of power users have had issues too.  If it’s a network issue, why does restarting the software resolve it temporarily?

Network issues can be very complicated.  I will admit, far more complicated than my networking smarts allow for.  Issues with TCP, UPnP, router IP conflicts and on and on.  As I was on the steep learning curve, I was having plenty of issues too.  I even had the guys at SGC try to figure out why I couldn't run their software consistently in the opticalRendu and we eventually gave up and I returned everything.  And they really know their stuff - far more than the average Joe, so that should tell you a lot.  I've since rebuilt my LAN with fiber optic, added managed fiber switches, new fiber router, PSU's, etc, etc.  And now Roon is ROCK solid (pun intended as I run ROCK via a NUC).  It doesn't disconnect, doesn't cut off the ends of songs, doesn't skip a beat or anything else unpredictable.

I *think* restarting Roon software/device temporarily refreshes the IP addresses and something (another device most likely) borks it down the road (it becomes conflicted).  But it's too complicated to have any certainty.

@jji666 wrote: 

I definitely agree that trouble-shooting Roon is a highly complex process. But it’s just not fair to say that nearly all problems with Roon are the user’s fault and usually due to their crappy network. True: many users that complain of problems have crappy networks (many are powerline! Yuck!). False: Roon is stable if your network is.

There are many ways in the way of ordinary use of Roon that cause it to tax itself to the point it piddles. Just do 15-20 searches in a row, adding tags to your search findings in between, then bring up a large tag and try to use focus on some of the tag results. It’s gonna choke.

Someone mentioned that having many open remotes also seemed to tax Roon. I’ve had my eye on that as a potential cause as well and there does seem to be some correlation.

I’m definitely not kicking Roon from a software design standpoint. I couldn’t do what I do with my music room without Roon. It’s brilliant in many respects. But that doesn’t make it stable.

AND, if it were the case that a restart of the core software temporarily refreshes IPs and other data that were causing problems, why doesn’t Roon just do that every so often?

I agree mostly.  I didn't mean to imply that Roon is 100% reliable if you know what you're doing.  Every situation is different.  But I also disagree that users without issues are just 'lucky'.  Your point on several open remotes as a potential cause could have merit.  I use a single tablet and always close Roon out whenever I turn off my DAC.  I don't even do it for Roon purposes.  It eats up my Samsung's battery when left open/running!

A restart should definitely not be an automated process.  Not everyone has IP conflicts.  In fact, I would bet the vast majority do not.