Sound quality of Roon

For most of this millennium I played with different music management software. I had been in IT for over 30 years. Overall, I didn’t find much different in the way they sounded… mostly dependent on the DAC and equipment used. I have had my CDs ripped for more than a dozen years.

I finally bought a dedicated high end streamer, Aurlic Aries G2 and happily removed the computer from my audio system. The Aurlic software was easy to use and left the feeling of having a computer in the loop gone. I was ecstatic. It found my files, and consolidated everything. I went on to find Aurender, a superior sounding streamer… I now own two.

I am really happy to leave my computers in my office and have my audio components perform like self contained audio components. Also, while I recognize this might be a strange criticism given one of my streamers cost $22K (a good deal for the sound quality in my opinion)… $24.99 / month for Ron? It only cost $14.99 for a Qobuz subscription for access to millions of albums. Then there is the fact that you can be sure that in ten years the landscape will be completely changed and Roon is either going to be replaced or embedded in devices.

Anyway, for me. I am really happy to have nothing to do with any software… other than the user interface presented by Aurender. But that is me. I get it if folks like using stuff like roon, I once did.

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.

I have used Roon/Tidal for 5 years. Problem with discussing "Roon sound quality" is that Roon is not a box you can take home and assess over a few hours. You should run it (preferably ROCK variant) on a custom server such as Nucleus. You should follow Roon's advice to use good LAN endpoints to drive your DACs or buy a Roon ready LAN DAC. You should have a dedicated audio LAN and decent power supplies to power everything. You should go through every setting (including DSP) to find what works best for your system and taste (DACs sound different at different sampling rates). The cost is quite high and it takes months of your time but the reward is sublime sound in the main system, music all around the house and easy browsing and discovery of new music.

In my system I just use Roon’s software via a Roon Nucleus music server to pick music from either Tidal or Qobuz without the DSP or any other EQ features available being engaged. I do this because I wanted to keep the signal path in my setup as simple as possible as it goes thru my Roon endpoint, an Audiowise SRC.DX, on its way to a Chord M Scaler, Chord TT2 DAC, a Woo WA22 hp amplifier, and a pair of Focal Utopia headphones. 

@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…