Roon Streaming Service actually Degrades the sound


The purpose of this post is to put pressure on the Roon engineers

to make Roon a better product. How do I know Roon is less than ideal?

From a streamer maker who has the highest standards and 

consequently refuses to go the Roon route. As he put it "I experiment with

my prototype and eliminate everything which holds the best sound back".

Sad to say he rejected Roon for exactly this reason.

I use Roon and do not want to learn a different, worse program.

Hence I want Roon to get better. Anyone listening Roon Folk?

 

 

chorus

I expect any quality issues someone experience with Roon are setup issues. A while ago I compared bit-streams passing through Roon. There was 0 degradation. It is sending out bit perfect, it cannot be negatively affecting the sound.

I have a dcs Vivaldi stack etc and confirm that to my ears the Roon is  backwards step. I have uninstalled and do not miss it

Improved buffering and caching for streaming content

We’ve made changes to Roon’s buffering and caching infrastructure when playing streaming content. The new implementation is designed to use a lighter touch when interacting with your network and internet connection, making streaming less intensive for your Roon Core.

This could really help me because I notice some recent ROON stoppages in playback that is network related. I have a very busy home office network with at least 10 servers and PC's plus other family entertainment devices.

 

Tried Roon a couple of times, but found Audirvana on a stripped down NUC just sounds noticeably better. Roon does look better though, but then again I am not looking at the sound.

I can't definitively state that Roon sounds equal to/better than all the alternatives mentioned here as I simply haven't tried them all, but I have A/B'ed Roon against Audirvana playing both standard res and hi-res files on a M1 Mac Mini and found zero difference in SQ. I also once used a player called Pure Music that I picked over Audirvana for SQ and didn't consider Roon a downgrade at all when I switched. In fact, I wouldn't have switched if I had detected a lesser SQ.