Sound quality of Roon

Roon is definitely the best overall.  Yes, quirky and unstable with limited support resources, but no doubt an amazing experience when working properly.

the thing is it takes a long time to optimize sound quality with Roon.  And when you benchmark sound quality, you need to use Roon with a streamer.

I would suggest that if commenters want to be specific about their Roon experience with SQ, it's necessary to state expressly whether the endpoint DAC is (or is connected to) a separate networked streamer or directly to the core machine.

Not that there is necessarily a difference as connected to every core machine, but Roon is designed such that it's optimal to use a separate streamer for the audio endpoint.  Roon is so taxing on the core that there's a very good chance the DAC won't sound best if connected directly to it, even if it's one of those fancy purpose built audio servers.  

The only way to truly gauge Roon's quality relative to others is by streaming from the Roon core to a separate networked endpoint. If you then really hear a difference between software, it's an interesting discussion as to why, since both are supposed to be bit perfect!

One hears the sound of Roon when using Innuos gear vs the Innuos Sense software. Roon sounds different vs Sense on Innuos gear. Obvious and easily heard with a resolving system.

My digital front end consists of: Innuos Zenith 3... - Tron Atlantic Signature dac. 

But that is not a fair test.  The Innuous software is developed to run and feed right to the DAC; it's far more lightweight than Roon.  Roon drives your gear like a stock car driver and is very resource-heavy.  Their solution is to isolate that by feeding the pure PCM stream over the network to a different endpoint that is doing nothing but streaming the data. 

I understand you can A/B Roon on these single server/streamer combo units.  What I'm saying is that since it's not the way Roon recommends using their software, if you want a fair scientific comparison, you gotta stream to a separate, very quiet endpoint. 

It might still sound worse.  But that's the fair test.

Vast, vast majority of Roon issues are either user or network issues, I've not had single Roon caused issue in a few years of using it, only time I had issues, my network to blame. Roon forums will also prove this out, Roon pretty much as foolproof as it gets.

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?

@audiom3 wrote:

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.

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?

Again, Roon has no inherent reliability issues, seamless streaming requires some network and computer knowledge.

I agree with the second independent clause in this sentence.  But, Roon definitely has inherent reliability issues. Some may not experience them.  I have found that most Roon users that say they don't have issues don't press Roon too hard.  They turn it off every night, don't use more than 1-2 remotes, and have a pretty simple endpoint setup.  The one thing Roon does seem to be pretty robust with is supporting multiple endpoints, albeit it may still just stop and wait for play to be pressed again.  Roon likes positive reinforcement!  Good Roon.  Good Roon!

@sns  said:  Doesn't your admittance that some may not experience reliability issues,  and many testaments from those who also don't experience these issues prove there is no inherent reliability issues with Roon?

No, I don't follow that logic.  Roon offers a lot of features, and many people don't use them and thus don't see the issues.  My supposition is that tag queries and searches tax the database in some way that creates a resource problem and the core application doesn't recover until restarted. It's just a guess based on heavy database usage correlating with Roon choking on many occasions.  But even if I just leave it open for 2-3 days it needs a restart.

And as I said above, using multiple remotes also seems to correlate with some of the stability issues I've seen.  

The problem isn't one is pressing Roon too hard, it''s that Roon is pressing the server beyond it's capabilities. Roon can be both processing heavy or not, be prepared to have more processing ability with server for users maxing out Roon processing.

I've got a dedicated Roon core:  Core i7, 11th generation, 8 cores (16 logical) with standard speed at 3.60 Ghz and peak of 5 GHz, 32GB RAM and a PCI 4.0 SSD - the fasted the board will take.  That machine can probably process 5 streams of 4K video and still run a browser window.  Short of IBM's Blue, what kind of machine do you think won't be taxed by Roon?

IMO Roon gets a bad name by providing many conveniences without more clearly stating the need for more processing power with these convieniences. Roon, with it's complex interface already more process intensive than some of the other players, many servers simply don't have the engine to provide much more than elemental Roon settings.

This is all true...except not in my house.  I have a 10G network and the above spec'd Roon core.  I've been running movies and music over digital networks for over 25 years, have built probably 150 computers over that period, and been the network admin for my own dot-com startup. I've now built 6 Roon cores (we have 2 houses and I upgrade frequently).

I guess what I'm saying is I think I'd have a sense of when software is stable and when my setup is the problem.

Yes, I could tone down what I do with Roon (I use 4 endpoints in a zone, 3 remotes, 2-4 web displays simultaneously) but I don't see why I would.  I push Roon and it piddles.  I see plenty of others with similar issues on the Roon forum.

To be clear, I am a huge Roon fan.  I would just like to see them focus on stability across platforms before pushing forward.  They've made a different calculation and it's their product.  But when I see people say that Roon is perfectly stable I'll call that out.  It is not.  It's great.  But (1) web displays and remotes show the previous artist instead of the current one quite often; (2) remotes "lose" album cover thumbnails and occasionally the full size version; (3) web displays often lose artist images; (4) tracks stop at the end and "play" has to be pushed, and occasionally stop in the middle; (5) Roon pops messages that "files are loading slowly" and stops playing, then immediately remedies that when the Roon core is restarted; (6) Roon will just close itself sometimes; (6) Roon stops playing IP radio frequently, and often tells me the station has disappeared; and (7) crossfade will abruptly stop a track about 5 seconds before it's done playing and then miss the first second of the next track, instead of actually crossfading.

I'm not here to criticize anyone's choice of Roon. But it does have inherent stability problems.