Sound quality of Roon

After reading the comments on this post, one thing has become clear.

There is no consensus on the benefits of Roon, in fact, it seems to me that people hear what they want to hear.

My belief is that people subliminally convince themselves that the money they spent was worth it.

I'm not saying that there was or wasn't an improvement. What I am saying is that the person paying for it "wants" to feel that it was money well spent.

I believe that the reality of the situation is that there are a lot of components that are excellent, but looked at individually, aren't significantly better than what the other guy bought.

Think about it.

Every time an OP asks for recommendations for a component, there are dozens of responses from Audiogoners extolling the virtues of component X, Y or Z. To me this is proof that the differences between components is minimal once a certain level is achieved.

@troidelover1499 There's a lot of great insights on here. This topic has been on my mind for the last couple of weeks for other reasons. Here are a couple of thoughts:

1.) I currently use Roon streamed from a dedicated Mac Mini (M1). My current digital setup consists of Roon --> HQPlayer (non-upsampling) --> Curious Cable USB --> Denafrip Hermes DDC --> AudioQuest Carbon HDMI I2S --> Denafrips Terminator II.

2.) Roon is a product that is generalized to work all kinds of different hardware, virtually none of which is optimized for digital audio playback. Jitter is a constant negative variable in digital audio SQ, and many hardware manufacturers (like Apple) aren't necessarily concerned with digital audio playback. Personally, I think the Mac M1 chips sound better than the older Intel chips. 

3.) Jitter IS a problem that virtually all DAC manufacturers address and mitigate with varying degrees of success. Digital-to-Digital converters from manufacturers like iFi and Denafrips can help mitigate that issue a little more. A DDC is something that I think can help improve the SQ of a Roon music player. 

4.) It is true that some streamer manufacturers may focus their hardware on the elimination of jitter and producing a clean audio stream for the DAC, and thus higher sound quality. However, I suspect that most of those manufacturers focus their efforts first on the user experience (since it is the most visible), and second on the hardware. I also think there are fewer manufacturers that put a great deal of effort into both of those things, and can produce streamers with better SQ results than Roon. 

5.) For me, Roon and HQPlayer on an M1 Mac platform give a lot of flexibility. I currently use HQPlayer as the transport of sorts (without upsampling, which I know is weird) between Roon and my DDC because I think it sounds better. I'm somewhat conflicted on upsampling right now, but at a minimum what I can say is that it can give a few more "flavors" of sound to choose from. That said, many of those kinds of options are just out of the question with a dedicated streamer.

For now, this setup works really well for me, but I'm always on the lookout for something better. Best of luck. 

@past This sounds right to me, makes sense and backs up what many experts have told me during my research, the DAC makes the biggest difference to SQ.

I would suggest that if commenters want to be specific about their Roon experience with SQ, it's necessary to state expressly whether the endpoint DAC is (or is connected to) a separate networked streamer or directly to the core machine.

Not that there is necessarily a difference as connected to every core machine, but Roon is designed such that it's optimal to use a separate streamer for the audio endpoint.  Roon is so taxing on the core that there's a very good chance the DAC won't sound best if connected directly to it, even if it's one of those fancy purpose built audio servers.  

The only way to truly gauge Roon's quality relative to others is by streaming from the Roon core to a separate networked endpoint. If you then really hear a difference between software, it's an interesting discussion as to why, since both are supposed to be bit perfect!

@jji666

I would suggest that if commenters want to be specific about their Roon experience with SQ, it’s necessary to state expressly whether the endpoint DAC is (or is connected to) a separate networked streamer or directly to the core machine.

this is a good point, which i would broaden

meaningless for someone to talk about how they feel roon sounds, unless they clearly state how it is implemented, from how the system receives its internet feed, to what core machine is used, to how the music feed is then extracted, filtered and sent to streamer and dac (and which streamer and dac are used and how they are connected)...

one doesn't simply hear the 'sound of roon' - one hears the result of everything above sent to their dac, which then reconstructs the analog music that is played by the system downstream of it