Roon vs OS and Native Players - Impact on SQ?

Being such a flexible solution that runs on so many different devices, performance and reliability is where I have seen Roon come up a bit short over the last year. However, since the harmon acquisition, there have been several new releases in recent weeks that appear to have resolved that, which is a big plus so far for Harmon.  Things run much faster and reliably now.  I'd encourage anyone impacted by past performance and reliability issues with Roon consider taking a fresh look. Looking forward to what may come next.  So far thumbs up for "Harmon"-ized Roon.

Another cool thing about ROON is the control app can function as an endpoint. Sometimes I will take a set of blue tooth headphones to bed a listen to a little music via the iPAD to relax. The desktop app the same, it sees my little Audio Engine D1 attached to my Mac and I can play my descent headphones if my work gets mindless enough.  Not to mention the new ARCH capability which I have not tried because I dont have my local files indexed in ROON. 

@mclinnguy Antipodes could definitely be included in that list. In all honesty, they were simply excluded since I’m not too familiar with their offerings, but I have heard wonderful things from owners on this forum.

@toro3 Ok, then allow me to add part C:

C. As a Roon user, how much of a bottleneck are we talking about in terms of diminished SQ when comparing Roon to Antipodes native players?

Let me summarize my recent streamer/player experiences/thoughts and speak out loud for a minute:

First, I love Roon. I have had it for many years and I like others have a lifetime subscription, so my comments have nothing to do with the monthly fee. I have only had the Antipodes for 3 months, and up until then have never used any other app or other "native player" other than Roon for 6 years or so. The UI is still the best their is.

I’m no expert and have done no research on this, but from what I have read Innuos and Antipodes both use squeeze framework for their native player. Antipodes still calls it squeeze but Innuos renamed it. Don’t know if Aurender started from scratch or modified Logitech’s as well.

It is rumoured, again just what I have read, that some big-name streamer companies have consulted with Roon to customize their player software and "fine-tune" it to their liking, and people who have heard Taiko or Grimm have been quoted as saying the Roon in those players sounds much better than the Roon in a competitors streamer/player. I haven’t heard any of these, and for a while was interested in the Grimm but then you are locked into their proprietary software, which is actually Roon, which I had no problem with at the time. But I feel I made the right decision to go with Antipodes instead because one is not locked into any software- there are many options, much more beyond Roon or Squeeze- and there is even an option to use Roon’s wonderful UI as server app and Squeeze as the player app. Genius! Jplay, HQ Player, Minimserver, MPD and MiniDLNA are other options. A few Antipodes owners are remastering their files using PGGB first which Antipodes handles better than other streamer/players- I don’t know much about this. I may explore this in the future- Audio Bacon recently did a review of this PGGB software.

Now to address part C.- yes, to my ears, Roon sounds different than Squeeze.

Saying the same thing 2 different ways, first in a favourable Roon light:

Roon is rounder, warmer, and more forgiving.

In a less favourable Roon flavour:

Roon has a more opaque bass, a congested midrange, and rolled off highs.

Squeeze to my ears is more transparent, separates instruments better, and has better frequency extension- with no reduction in richness or naturalness- yes it sounds "better", but care must be taken in cable selection or lesser quality recordings sound that much worse.

To quote a professional reviewer who recently reviewed the K22, one I respect and enjoy reading his informative and well written reviews more than anyone else:

"So, how does the K22 sound with Squeeze? I won’t sugar-coat it; Squeeze sounds a lot better to me than Roon, certainly on Antipodes servers. Playing the same tracks as before, there is a new level of tightness, crispness, articulation, and overall precision to the sound. It’s a leaner presentation, for sure, but the server simply refuses ever to sound dry or anemic. The transparency and precision are definitely increased, but even so, I still hear the richness, saturation, and flow that characterize the server."

K22 review

Pretty much exactly as I see it. It is nice when reviewers hear things the same as we do 😉

@mclinnguy 

…

Roon is rounder, warmer, and more forgiving.

In a less favourable Roon flavour:

Roon has a more opaque bass, a congested midrange, and rolled off highs.

…

that’s pretty much in line with my observations when I owned Auralic Aries G1. I would also say that the flatter and narrower soundstage I noticed with Roon is most likely a bi-product of the above. The UI Roon offers is absolutely the best though.
Nothing compares to it.