Made the Move and Not looking back!

Hmm. I have roon and like it. I don’t use their DSP which might "degrade" the sound. I also have an Innuos streamer with Sense.

I read your post with interest until I got to the part "you still pay for it". Seems if you use Sense to control Tidal or Qobuz you wouldn’t need Roon.

Please clarify. Perhaps I don’t need to pay for roon.  Your comment that Sense is a form or Roon is intriguing.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Jerry

Similar experience here with Auralic and their Lightning DS music management software. I had Roon - loved the interface and meta data. But, when I compared the exact same Qobuz files over Roon vs Lightning DS, (no processing -  so it was a fair comparison), I dropped my Roon subscription that day.  LDS sounded better. 

I’m guessing there are certain systems for which Roon is perfectly fine. And, there are some systems that are built around Roon.  But, I would never go back. Over LDS, music is much more open - there’s just more spatial information - depth and breadth.

As I thought about it more, it didn’t surprise me, though I’m sure the 1s and 0s crowd remains skeptical. Native music management systems are built around the architecture of the hardware. Buffers/cache etc are all optimized. Roon is like MSFT Windows. It has to run across all kinds of hardware. How can it be optimal for all systems?  Again, love the interface, but LDS is also more than good enough on that front. The quality of the music reproduction matters more to me.  As always, YMMV.

Best,

If you want the best streaming then buy the innuos Ethernet switch 

my brother has one and is exceptional.

Never bought into roon. First it was bluos, now it's innuos sense, both remarkable in simplicity. If you have a good os, Roon seems like an unnecessary expense.

Glad its working for you. Based on my personal experience, I am smitten with Roon. 

I think Roon is awesome. It sounds great, does it all and runs on most anything. It’s a music lover’s dream. Not the only player in the game but a superstar nonetheless. I did the trial and bought the lifetime license. One of the best $800 or so a music lover  can shell out.

Yea, tried the other music streamers/databases and then decided on Roon. One of the main reasons I didn't go for an Auralic streamer. I've simply found it to be by far the best way of cataloging my music discovering information behind the albums and the bands.

@carlsbad2, pretty sure he meant Roon charges for you while they take days or more to help with service outages.  He’s lamenting there is no credit for the time the service is not providing what he is paying for.  Pretty reasonable position, it seems.  Jeffseight’s position I mean.
 

I use Innuos’s Sense to control qobuz and love it.  It’s a version of Roon like Pepsi is s version of Coke.  Not affiliated in any way.  And Sense is free but only available to Innuos owners.

On my system, Sense sounds better than Roon.  Other Innuos users I know concur.  
 

I use JPLAY with my LUMIN streamer, streaming from a Solid State NAS running Minimstreamer that does the FLAC to WAV conversion in the NAS, taking away that task from the LUMIN. Minimstreamer also upsamples. It sounds great.

Be aware that the Innuos switch is a100Mb/s device only.

Thanks @rc22.  that answers all my questions.  I'll try it one of these days before it is time to renew Roon.  

I love ROON, it use it in my Esoteric Network player via a NAS and it fantastic!

I am on another thread focused on the Gustard R26. Many over there are using with great results HQ player. I have not looked into it yet, but many over there have nothing good to say on roon.

It seems that the comments about Roon should be separated into those using the Roon DSP and those only using the Hi-rez files (native). Without going thru their (questionable) DSP engine, Roon (to my knowledge) is only finding the file>extracting metadata >passing the file to your streamer (Nucleus +in my case). I see no way for it to add or detract from the file quality or sound of the file when used in this manner. PLEASE correct me if I’m wrong because the sound quality I get using it without DSP is exceptional and I would find it difficult for anyone to tell the difference from another streaming/file management platform?

The Innuos platforms and the Sense application are first class and IMHO, are superior to the Roon platforms and application. I find better SQ and support with Innuos. I was an early adapter of the Roon ecosystem and have a lifetime subscription. Have not used it in 2 years now. I will say there are many that like Roon and I am happy for them, it works. 

My perspective is that Roon's strong point is information about the music you are listening to -- who was the drummer on that album, and where can I hear more of him or her? Roon also claims the ability to introduce you to other artists similar to the ones you already like. If you like these features, you're probably a Roon fan.

I tried Roon and found I don't really explore music in the way it offers. I haven't found myself particularly entranced by the musicians themselves, and often found the "similar artists" Roon recommended just didn't do much for me. Yeah, the styles may have been similar, but the new-to-me artist frequently just didn't grab me.  I have a Qobuz subscription and have a lot more fun exploring their new releases every Friday -- I've found more new-to-me interesting artists that way than Roon ever did, often in styles and genres that have zero relation to anything I've been currently listening to.

As is common in the audio hobby, YMMV. Use what works for you.

@carlsbad2 Is there a reason to wait till your Roon subscription expires? Go ahead and start using the free Innuos Sense app now. I had a one-year with Roon and downloaded Sense the minute it came out in summer of 2021. I never used Roon again despite being paid up thru Feb. 2022.

@mlsstl +1, you covered a lot of ground there. Totally agree Roon is information-centric. That’s how it was pitched to me. Some love that which is awesome. No sour grapes here. Not saying one is better that the other for everyone. I love IPA’s but couldn’t care less that so many don’t.

@boostedis. I never even tried the dsp feature during the 6 months I used Roon prior to the release of Innuos’s Sense app. Reminder: my SQ comments are limited to my experience on one player brand only: Innuos.  But to reiterate, there are quite a few Innuos users who’ve also observed that Sense sounds better than Roon.
 

Roon support is easily the worst support for a good product that has ever existed in the planet earth....days go by...you finally get a response and it’s"have you tried rebooting your core".

It’s really terrible. It took them 3 years to finally tell me my music database was beyond the capability of my Nucleus+ to handle. True story. Then they refused to refund the price of the Nucleus blaming my library while saying the Nucleus was working fine.

All this Inspired me to purchase an Innuos Pulsar which will arrive in a day or 2. I’m heartened by all the positive reviews of the Sense app and really hope I can dump Roon. It will be a glorious day when that happens

The thing with Roon is you can run it on anything. The documentation does list minimum spec requirements for various platforms but it’s up to the user to integrate the hardware and software in many cases. Results can easily vary.

The nice thing about products like Innuos and others is they do the integration for you. That’s a good option for some but you probably will pay a premium for it. Applies to Roon as well if one elects to go with the hardware they sell that already has Roon integrated for you.

I do systems integration for a living. Roon core is running great for me on a $300 desktop mini PC, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. I also run Plex and work remotely on it all at the same time. No problems. I use Cambridge Audio streamers, Mac, iPhone, and tablets all as Endpoints or controllers. It’ can get a little complicated sometimes mainly because Roon is so versatile in how it streams, does displays, etc. But it sounds top notch streaming on my main hifi setup or elsewhere. It’s cool to have music playing throughout the house and even outside from time to time.

I’ve been streaming now for about 15 years. Started with Roon earlier this year . Used Squeezebox and Plex mostly for streaming prior.  My library is ~1Tb of mostly CD res FLAC files  

Different strokes for different folks. Master it somehow though and Roon is music heaven!

@boostedis 

You make a great point. However, as I stated in my previous post, I wasn’t using any DSP through Roon. The comparison I did was Auralic’s LDS playing a specific file and then Roon on my Auralic unit playing the exact same file. I tried multiple files. BTW-  I was running Roon Core on a souped up Mac Mini w/ a solid state hard drive, 16GB of ram exclusively dedicated to roon. Everything else was turned off.  It was the purest test I could do.  Auralic’s Lightning DS sounded significantly better than Roon and it was easily discernible. 

I get that many people love Roon. i, too, loved the interface and meta data. Those who claim their system sounds great using Roon - I’m sure they’re right. But the question they may not be answering is: does it sound as good as it could?  

If they’re satisfied, great. But, if they’re curious to wonder “what if?”, the only way to know is to compare both. 

Best,

Lol at all the comments Roon changes how it sounds. It's bit perfect. The folks at Grimm even tested it. If you use dsp then I'm sorry. 

@mgrif104 

Auralic’s Lightning DS sounded significantly better than Roon and it was easily discernible. 

Wait until you get the chance to hear an Aurender running its OS, or the Grimm MU1 running Roon...unfortunately there are many levels of "excellent".

The makers who want to sell their products have to go with Roon.

The Aurenders and Lejonklous of the world are fighting for the

highest SQ. I loved Roon's Music finding ability but I think Qobuz

can about the same.

I am not sure why the folks who are complaining about Roon support are needing Roon support. Are you folks using Innuos products? Are your devices Roon Ready? The only time I ever needed Roon support was when I ran my Roon Core on an Innuos Zenith MK3. But the Innuos was not Roon Ready, at least it wasn’t back then. After I got away from Innuos and built a miniPC/Intel NUC to run Roon Core I had zero issues. My Innuos gear was underpowered to run Roon and it crashed all the time. For you folks needing support for Roon, as an experiment, but an Intel NUC, some dual rank RAM (I suggest 32GB) and a 250-256 GB M.2 SSD from Amazon. Put it together and load Roon ROCK and run your Roon core there. Compare the performance to what you had been using. If you don’t want to stay with the NUC, then just dismantle the NUC and return all the parts to Amazon. When I did this experiment the NUC blew away my Zenith Mk3 which I then sold. 
Once your get your Roon core on a proper Roon Ready device or a NUC, Roon is maintenance free. IMO. Just run the occasional updates. 

@jeffseight are you sure Aurender won't adopt Roon? See this thread here, scroll down to Willy response https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/music-server-advice

Roon has spawned imitators.  Such is the way of life for innovators.  I have found that even the Room-like features provided by the streaming services themselves such as Apple Music scratch the itch for the service that Room provides.  ymmv

While you all are typing I’m listening to my Aurender with the Conductor app. Happy listening!

My perspective is that Roon’s strong point is information about the music you are listening to...

The other strong point is using various endpoints with multiple systems. (Sonore, Bryston, BS, Moon even the old and lowly Sonos ZP 90s can be used)

Its even cooler that the app on my iMac acts as and endpoint and can digitally output to the USB headphone output or my USB connected Schiit DAC for desktop speaker audio. Even the ipad can do it for remote headphone listening anywhere in the house.

I agree with others that once you get it dialed in you really don’t need that much support. Since I moved my core to an SGC i5 its been rock solid and sound close enough to my Bryston BDP pi to be good enough. Super easy to switch to the BDP for critical listening.

Also understand the frustrated people. If you dont have all the piece parts dialed in the SQ will not compare to a quality high end stand alone unit.

@ghasley 

I upgraded to the Auralic from an Aurender N100H. The Auralic was significantly better. However, while I’ve  heard the more recent Aurender units - I haven’t had them in my system so I can’t comment on whether (or perhaps how much) better they may be. I’ve an open mind on such things.  I’m certain my Auralic unit can be bettered. Regardless, Roon was the bottleneck. And, I can imagine it would be the same for Aurender should they decide they need to offer Roon compatibility and as an alternative to their native conductor music management system.

I’ve also given a serious audition to the Grimm. I’ve considered it as it’s very nice, but it’s not a significant step up from what I have.