I know Roon tries to sell itself on the merits of being a more "curated" platform for your music. To be honest, I've not found any value whatsoever from that perspective, with the exception of the selection of music that continues to play after Roon has finished playing what you ask it to play. I do enjoy the new music it chooses to play based on the last thing I told it to play. However, with this feature I've yet to find a new artist that I actively take note of to the extent that they become part of my regular rotation. So it's more of a neat feature versus being a game changer. I do find this feature selects far more interesting music to play versus say Apple Music.
I tried a couple of other tests:
1) Comparing streamed Tidal Hifi on my Innuos Zenith Mk III VS Ripped CD on the Innuos (using default FLAC settings). To be honest, I had trouble telling the difference. The ripped version MAY have had a very, very marginal advantage with respect to overall transparency, but I easily could be imagining that.
2) Disabling Roon altogether on the Innuos and using iPeng to play ripped music (on the Innuos). Results were very similar to my prior test, streaming Tidal Hifi using Roon on the Innuos. But was too cumbersome to switch back and forth quickly to do effective A-B testing, so again, not too sure of any differences - which, if any, were small.
Even my preferred sound of Audirvana with my Mac Mini had only negligible differences from Roon on the Innuos. Even though my descriptors that I used in my original post may make it sound as if there are vast differences, those descriptors are only describing minute differences that I can discern. It's not night and day, but over a long multi-hour listening session, I do find that even minor sonic differences do accumulate and have a greater impact over a longer period than a brief comparison between the two may suggest.
I tried a couple of other tests:
1) Comparing streamed Tidal Hifi on my Innuos Zenith Mk III VS Ripped CD on the Innuos (using default FLAC settings). To be honest, I had trouble telling the difference. The ripped version MAY have had a very, very marginal advantage with respect to overall transparency, but I easily could be imagining that.
2) Disabling Roon altogether on the Innuos and using iPeng to play ripped music (on the Innuos). Results were very similar to my prior test, streaming Tidal Hifi using Roon on the Innuos. But was too cumbersome to switch back and forth quickly to do effective A-B testing, so again, not too sure of any differences - which, if any, were small.
Even my preferred sound of Audirvana with my Mac Mini had only negligible differences from Roon on the Innuos. Even though my descriptors that I used in my original post may make it sound as if there are vast differences, those descriptors are only describing minute differences that I can discern. It's not night and day, but over a long multi-hour listening session, I do find that even minor sonic differences do accumulate and have a greater impact over a longer period than a brief comparison between the two may suggest.