After a decade or so of budget experimenting with computer audio and using low end devices (Olive, NativVita and laptops) along with a couple of DAC’s that still see use, I purchased a Nucleus (which comes with a year of Roon- which delays the inevitable). Considered the Innous, but was put off by their no-return policy; in contrast to the Nucleus 30 day trial period. The Nucleus/Roon sounded a little more detailed going through the USB Burson DAC. My digital audio epiphany came when I bought a Bricasti M1 MDX with a network card last month. Roon manages output to my main system with the Bricasti as a Roon end connected by ethernet- I’m listening more to that than to my turntable. The Nucleus then went upstairs to serve as core and with output via USB to my Burson DAC as a Roon end. That combo is a bit too "sharp/digital" to my liking but it’s a secondary system in a difficult room. There was a learning curve with Roon as software. It seems to like Windows more than Mac for CD file transfers after ripping to a hard drive. Attaching a hard drive to the Nucleus for CD ripping is slow and glitchy. Qobuz is glitchy also. But with the right DAC, Roon can sound REALLY good. And for synching rooms to the same music output, accross different sound systems, it’s impressive software.
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?