Audirvana vs Roon

Just started a trial with Audirvana.  So far, I like the looks and the sound.  Not really impressed with usability like making playlists and "working" with the music.  I'm not ready to pay Roon prices yet.  Wish we had more options.  Foobar still works but no way to control with my phone. 

I find Audirvana to be a better choice when run directly from my imac to a connected USB DAC. When operating over the ethernet/wifi using A+ to separate systems I suffer performance issues. In those cases Roon works better for me. The Roon interface is far better, but for a backup program I really like Audirvana. I’ve basically abandoned JRiver MC at this point.

I don't use Audirvana every day, yesterday fired up the latest version on a Win10 PC, UpNP to a Lumin U1.

Took about 15-20 minutes to sync the library adding some 50 albums or so, mainly redbook, nothing happens until the sync has stopped. The recently added titles are under playlists, but they're in alphabetical order, not from the filename date...... used Jriver to find recently added and manually searched in Audirvana.

Played a few albums while doing some chores, all looked good.  
Let the system stay idle for a few hours then played a redbook album, 5s of music then white noise from the speakers. F$ck.

Useless software, honestly. Imagine if the levels were straight to a power amp, blown tweeters to replace. It's not as if it was a hardship to play a redbook album.

Quit Audirvana, and played Roon without issue. If Roon falls over and this is very rare, the output is muted with file playback just stalling. In this case, restart the Roon core and all good.

I don't have SQ or transport issues with Roon, there's no upsampling, EQ, DSP, just playback as is. Some operational 'features' with Roon are annoying, but not to the extent of  how Audirvana can fall over. 

If Audirvana was as reliable as Roon, I would use it more often, but now I'm very tempted to remove Audirvana altogether.  

I know and appreciate some of you will find Audirvana works fine, you're fortunate that it works, and it must be something wrong with my system. I play Jriver, Roon, VLC without the problems of Audirvana. I don't need the hassle.

I once noticed that Roon clearly sounded different than LMS. Turned out it was a different implementation of replaygain. 🙃

i was having issues with long tracks typically over 5 minutes causing crackle sounds while playing Audirvana. I was also having these issues on Youtube while Audirvana was open and not engaged. It did not matter if the file was streamed locally or internet. I posed the question on the Audirvana forum and was recommended to change the file buffer setting in Aud+ Preferences to about 20% of full buffer. That got rid of the noise.

MacBook Pro> USB to SMSL DAC > XLR out to powered Monitors