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?
@grannyring @oldschool1948 , I think I am the ONLY person who has said they prefer Roon on an Innuos product to Sense, in terms of sound quality. I have a fully updated Zenith Mk 3. To me Sense sounds slightly too bloated or “filled-in” to me, with all of the space and air around vocals and instruments removed when compared with Roon. Maybe I have a setup issue but I’ve tried messing with settings. |
@grannyring , I know I am the outlier with my experience but the way you describe Sense over Roon is precisely the inverse of what I hear on my system. Roon is far more nuanced and detailed and Sense sounds flat by comparison. I have the Zenith 3, Innuos PhoenixUSB reclocker (feeding my Diablo 300 GRYPHON DAC module), and also a PhoenixNET isolation switch. If there is a way to make Sense sound better than Roon, I’d love to figure that out! |
@grannyring yep I disable Roon when I flip over to Sense. I was going to aske if you were running Squeezebox experimental mode! Because without it I would say Sense sounds better than Roon. But things get more dimensional for me running Roon in Squeezebox mode, vs Sense. I do get the sense that mids and vocals move back in the mix. Or rather, everything else expands closer and further around vocals and acoustic guitars, creating a more 3D sound, if that makes sense. Again, thank know I’m the odd one out with my experience! Not sure why though… |
