Sound quality of Roon

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…

I have a fairly simple setup.  Microsoft surface as a core and a sonore roon player feeding an audio gd dac with usb.  The speakers, amplifier, and speaker cable are the same I auditioned with using a lumin streamer and Aqua audio dac.  Plan was to purchase the dac and streamer when funds replenished.  In my system, the sq is just as good, if not better at present.  What surprised me was Amazon hd music with an android tablet and a chromecast audio streamer via a budget toslink cable. Perhaps a little less detail than room, but excellent sound.  My thought is how the dac isolates, caches, and converts the data is primary

to me the streaming front end, streaming services, roon and competitors (embedded in hardware or software only) is an area that should see continuing change and advancement for the next several years as pertaining to high end audio

streaming has come a long long way, and will continue to evolve, many good comments about roon here

i think the spirit of the op’s query is that many if not most folks can appreciate what conveniences and features roon brings to a user... especially one with both local and streamed media sources... in how it organizes and accesses it all seamlessly, provides useful meta data, reviews, photos, and recommendations...but in light of this, he is wonderful if one necessarily faces some sacrifices in sonic quality as part of the trade to get those conveniences

it seems that the emerging answer is no, not if implemented correctly and with all the needed ancillaries required... the ’trade’ is more relating to the fairly substantial monetary cost and time to learn and optimize its use, quite above and well beyond what one sees as the initial cost of implementing (or trying) roon on an extra computer laying around...

My belief is that people subliminally convince themselves that the money they spent was worth it.

@tony1954

You’re right that often some of us swoon over our latest purchase or improvement because of our internal biases (untill we don’t).

On this roon SQ discussion I have a different take away.

@jjss49 is spot on saying

it seems that the emerging answer is no, not if implemented correctly and with all the needed ancillaries required... the ’trade’ is more relating to the fairly substantial monetary cost and time to learn and optimize its use, quite above and well beyond what one sees as the initial cost of implementing (or trying) roon on an extra computer laying around

I too had to dive in and up my game resulting in SQ on par with CD and shy of a vinyl system costing deep into five digits (not including the rest of a system).

Also my mate could care less and she thinks the sound excellent. Nothing subliminal about it from her  

Many roon users prefer a core not on a laptop or computer outputing via USB. I used an old lap top at first and quit roon for two years. Then I happened to hear Roon on a sytem with a nucleus and you can guess the rest.

@tony1954 Do you use roon and if so what’s your set up? The blue prints are to be found here on many levels of setup.