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Aurender vs Roon

I’ve been testing Roon running on an older MacBook vs Aurender N100SC into the same DAC (Weiss 501). Absolutely same network, Ethernet cable, and switch.

When playing songs through Qobuz the two sources have distinctly different SQ. Roon warmer and a bit less dynamic than the Aurender which is cleaner, dryer, and possibly slightly better sound stage. Ultimately the Aurender is better strictly from a SQ perspective—Roon is superior for the interface.
 

This is in the 5% difference space, but definitely different. 


I assume the Aurender is partly better because of a linear power supply and being dedicated hifi computer.

Question: is there a way through hardware to bring Roon server closer to Aurender or is there software processing going on here that is mostly responsible for the SQ difference?

w123ale
johnah5
223 posts
 

I heard a diff when I was trying Roon vs Qobuz directly from the Lumin.  Roon is all software so it is in the Roon ready streamer and there is no way to get any closer to the server

 

JH

w123ale OP
101 posts
 

I’ll add that the worst SQ is Qobuz directly to the DAC via UPnP which suggests some software piece of this. In order from worst to best;

UPnP

Roon via MacBook 

Aurender (definitely best for critical listening).

but this is kinda like which crème brûlée is best. They are all good.

 

lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,082 posts
 

A MacBook wouldn’t be a fair comparison with N100SC. If you really want to access ROON sound quality, a purpose built dedicated ROON server feeding 501/Roon ready DAC would yield comparable sound quality. 

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