Sound quality of Roon

@nyev 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.

I think you are the only person that likes Roon over Sense on a Zenith.  Just kidding 🤣!

It’s not that I dislike Roon by any means, I do listen to Roon on my main system sometimes.  I find the Sense sound “fuller” for sure, and Sense sounds a little “sweeter’ as well. 

My Roon core is running on a Mac-Mini, which sits in my upstairs office.  I’m still using the stock Mac power cord.  I’ve thought about getting a LPS for the Mac, but since I use it primarily for whole house stereo to Airplay speakers, I’m not sure I’d notice the difference.  

I’m using a Netgear Pro switch between the Orbi router in my office and my basement listening room.  The Mac-Mini plugs directly into the router.  I have considered getting a better switch, and an EtherREGEN for the listening room, but I’m not convinced the improvement would be worth the cost.  

According to the CEO of Roon in a livestream interview, Roon does not have its own sound. It is pulling information directly from the streaming services... unless you are using its built in parametric EQ or other DSP functions. 

Roon has a free trial and you can run the core on your PC or Mac for a trial. I personally love Roon, I have found it to be the best interface to listen to Tidal and Qobuz for sound quality as well as the numerous features Roon gives you access to.

I ran it on my Mac for the first few months and then invested in a $600 Intel NUC. Besides the maintenance of blowing out any dust in the NUC every few months, it has worked perfectly.

You have a terrific multiband Parametric Equalizer built into the software and with an investment of some time, you will find you can use it to equalize for your speaker environment or your headphones.

There are multiple filters as well as crossfeed, convolution, and more if desired. It's scalable so if you just want to use it for its capabilities to upsample music or just its Wiki type click for a veritable encyclopedia of music, the various versions which have the best resolution. Too much for a reply. No cost to try but it's worth the $12 to give it a fair shake, Either incorporate your music library or just use Tidal and or Qobuz.

Nothing to lose and a world of enhancements to gain. I have nothing invested in Roon, I can't see any negatives except the cost, If you have a good pair of headphones, you will notice the enhancements in SQ. Try it out nothing to lose- I am obviously a fan and using the NUC you can have multiple people in your home listen to multiple devices- an iPad, iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac. It's all good and the NUC is definitely a great way to go if you are comfortable installing an OS and have some technical acumen. I have no noise with my NUC- you still need a DAC and AMP. My 2¢

Comparing to ripped cd's, local files certainly is good way to ascertain sound quality.

Not sure I believe these music players don't have unique sound quality, many  report they do. I recall hearing unique sound qualities when I initially switched from Audirvana to 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.