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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 3 responses by audphile1

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
4,293 posts
 

@past 

The Streamer upgrade will not improve SQ.

I’d have to disagree. This hasn’t been my experience trying Mac Mini as a streamer via USB, then AURALiC Aries G1, then Lumin U1 Mini. Each device imparts its own sound signature with Mac Mini being the worst of the bunch in a capacity of a streamer. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
4,293 posts
 

From my experience…when I had AURALiC Aries G1 streaming Qobuz, after comparing streaming with AURALiC Lightning DS vs. Roon, the Lightning DS sounded better to me. Slightly. But enough to cancel Roon. I then switched to Lumin U1 Mini. To me Lumin sounded better in my system.
And because I wasn’t entirely in love with the Lumin UI, decided to give Roon another shot. This was about a year after I canceled Roon. I actually ended up liking Roon better than Lumin both sound and obviously the interface just hard to beat. I’ve done comparisons of Lumin to Roon and Tidal connect on Lumin to Roon. In all cases I preferred Roon. Attribute it to Roon’s multiple updates in tbat timeframe I was not using it or just the Roon readiness implementation by Lumin, not sure. But I’ve been using Roon ever since. 

Mac Mini was serving as Roon core in both cases. 

I would recommend trying Roon for free for 30 days as long as you have an adequate computer to run the Roon core on and it’s on the same network with your streamer you should be ok. Risk free. Especially if you have your music ripped to an external drive. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
4,293 posts
 

@overthemoon let me try and help you there…in Roon settings, general…scroll down to STREAMING CONTENT PREFERENCES. Under it you will see Streaming service preference. Select Qobuz or Tidal from drop down. That’s going to ensure the version played by default is either Qobuz or Tidal, and not the mp3 from your library. 
Let me know if that works. 

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