Roon Streaming Service actually Degrades 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.

I have tested SQ of Roon (hosted on remote Roon rock NUC) vs files or Qobuz streams played direct from the same local network bridge. Absolutely zero SQ difference.

I recently added a roon nucleus, switching from mconnectHD, streaming from Qobuz to my Bricasti DAC. There is no question that roon sounds different - and according to my sensibilities WORSE: muffled, with a loss of detail, ambiance, and nuance. I am not a happy camper.

I’ll add my $.02.

It would appear to be equipment dependent. In my case, I was a subscriber to Roon and, out of curiosity, tried streaming the same file using Lighting DS (Auralic’s software).  I dropped Roon the same day.  Incidentally, I was running Roon Core on a higher end Mac Mini solely dedicated to it with a solid state drive and 16GB ram.  I wasn’t using Roon to upsample or process in any way - it was a true straight shoot out. If I had been, perhaps I would have gotten different results.  Regardless, the reduction in sound quality was unacceptable.  I have heard indirectly that Auralic has tried to address this recently such that Roon might sound better now on my gear. I no longer have interest in spending the $ to find out as LDS works well too. 

So, as in all things audio - YMMV. 

Sure glad I do not use streaming as a source for critical listening or use a server.

I stream for finding new music and artists. I want my stream to sound good but I am not going into the weeds looking to match the sources I have in analog and cd. 
 

Not interested in chasing that dragon.