Sound quality of Roon


I am considering trying Roon.  I have been using my Bluesound Node but I am going to upgrade as I do enjoy streaming more and more using Tidal.  It is quite an investment to get a NUC or Nucleus and then have a separate tablet to control it all.
 

But apart from the cost I have read some people say Roon does not sound good.  Their streamer by blah blah sounds better.  Is this true?  For all that is required to use Roon, the hardware, the subscription and all, would Roon be popular if it made digital streaming sound bad?


I would love to hear people who have experience comment on this.  There is info on the Roon Labs discussion site but as you can imagine it is saying this is BS Roon sounds great.  I guess Roon as a software also has had updates, so maybe this is a thing that might have been true in the past?  

troidelover1499

Showing 1 response by flippant

Roon has a free trial and you can run the core on your PC or Mac for a trial. I personally love Roon, I have found it to be the best interface to listen to Tidal and Qobuz for sound quality as well as the numerous features Roon gives you access to.

I ran it on my Mac for the first few months and then invested in a $600 Intel NUC. Besides the maintenance of blowing out any dust in the NUC every few months, it has worked perfectly.

You have a terrific multiband Parametric Equalizer built into the software and with an investment of some time, you will find you can use it to equalize for your speaker environment or your headphones.

There are multiple filters as well as crossfeed, convolution, and more if desired. It's scalable so if you just want to use it for its capabilities to upsample music or just its Wiki type click for a veritable encyclopedia of music, the various versions which have the best resolution. Too much for a reply. No cost to try but it's worth the $12 to give it a fair shake, Either incorporate your music library or just use Tidal and or Qobuz.

 

Nothing to lose and a world of enhancements to gain. I have nothing invested in Roon, I can't see any negatives except the cost, If you have a good pair of headphones, you will notice the enhancements in SQ. Try it out nothing to lose- I am obviously a fan and using the NUC you can have multiple people in your home listen to multiple devices- an iPad, iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac. It's all good and the NUC is definitely a great way to go if you are comfortable installing an OS and have some technical acumen. I have no noise with my NUC- you still need a DAC and AMP. My 2¢