Sound quality of Roon

One of the unexpected benefits I discovered of ROON is that Old SONOS Zone players work as ROON endpoints. These are being aged out by SONOS and don’t work with their new eco system so they can be picked up for cheap. I have seen them on Craigs for a little as $50. I even saw one that had been moded by Wired4Sound for cheap. Of course this is midfi gear but they work great for spinning up systems in a garage, workshop etc. They only handle redbook CD quality but ROON will step the bit rate down if you are streaming higher resolution. Somebody gave me one that didn't work.  I discovered it was the network card was bad but worked fine if hard wired. Ran optical out to a Schiit Modi then to a pair of Audio Engine powered speakers and bad boom descent sounding music for non critical listening pleasure. 

The wadax server was in 1 of the worst sounding rooms at axpona this year by multiple reviewers. I didn’t believe any of the wadax server review in TAS either.

I went from using iTunes over 15 years ago, then using Pure Music and Audirvana for years, then going the dedicated server route using the Auralic Aries system running Lightning DS and Lumin software on it (superior to Aurender at that time).

The converted back to running Roon on a dedicated server. These servers over the years have ranged from a $50k Linux enterprise server using enterprise ssd technology to using a dedicated M1 Mac. Also tried new release of Audirvana but kept Roon.

The biggest advantage of all this was to get a quality dac that used Ethernet and i2s and place the server in a different room than my dedicated audio room. USB was the main cause of the sq degradation no matter what gimmicks/tweaks I purchased to increase sq.

Overall, I prefer Roon, then Audirvana, then Lightning DS, then Lumin in that order.

Somebody suggested that Roon sounds like the systems it's implemented with.  That sounds about right.  If anyone tells you Roon does not sound good, try to find out how they're implementing it.  Not just the electronic components, but also the content they're playing, the resolution, and any DSP they've applied.  

WIthout having a well-equipped test lab, I suggest you test Roon's SQ by comparing a file streamed through Roon with the same track played directly from a NAS/hard drive through all the same equipment, with equalized volume. If you find that the locally stored file sounds better, then you have to ask yourself if the difference is big enough that you'd want to forego all the advantages of a service like Roon.  I've tried some of the alternatives (Audirvana, Apple Music, the Tidal app, the Bluesound app, the Matrix Audio app).  IMO none of them measure up to Roon for functionality. Even if you use Roon  mainly to discover new music, you can always store favorite, HiRes tracks locally and listen to them in sessions without Roon.

Go with the Cary Audio DMS600, DMS650, DMS700 or the mighty Pro Series DMS800 streamer DAC with a Roon Nucleus. Very hard to beat the sound quality and the ease of use with the apps. I’ve never looked back since I have made the move. They sync beautifully.