Sound quality of Roon

to me the streaming front end, streaming services, roon and competitors (embedded in hardware or software only) is an area that should see continuing change and advancement for the next several years as pertaining to high end audio

streaming has come a long long way, and will continue to evolve, many good comments about roon here

i think the spirit of the op’s query is that many if not most folks can appreciate what conveniences and features roon brings to a user... especially one with both local and streamed media sources... in how it organizes and accesses it all seamlessly, provides useful meta data, reviews, photos, and recommendations...but in light of this, he is wonderful if one necessarily faces some sacrifices in sonic quality as part of the trade to get those conveniences

it seems that the emerging answer is no, not if implemented correctly and with all the needed ancillaries required... the ’trade’ is more relating to the fairly substantial monetary cost and time to learn and optimize its use, quite above and well beyond what one sees as the initial cost of implementing (or trying) roon on an extra computer laying around...

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

@tony1954

You’re right that often some of us swoon over our latest purchase or improvement because of our internal biases (untill we don’t).

On this roon SQ discussion I have a different take away.

@jjss49 is spot on saying

it seems that the emerging answer is no, not if implemented correctly and with all the needed ancillaries required... the ’trade’ is more relating to the fairly substantial monetary cost and time to learn and optimize its use, quite above and well beyond what one sees as the initial cost of implementing (or trying) roon on an extra computer laying around

I too had to dive in and up my game resulting in SQ on par with CD and shy of a vinyl system costing deep into five digits (not including the rest of a system).

Also my mate could care less and she thinks the sound excellent. Nothing subliminal about it from her  

Many roon users prefer a core not on a laptop or computer outputing via USB. I used an old lap top at first and quit roon for two years. Then I happened to hear Roon on a sytem with a nucleus and you can guess the rest.

@tony1954 Do you use roon and if so what’s your set up? The blue prints are to be found here on many levels of setup.

Roon's database is quite a problem due to its size. For my library of 8TB files, Roon database was 50-60 GB. Jriver is a fraction of that, as well as Minimserver. With a Lumïn U1, the best results were with the native app and Minimserver as the front end, I'm putting down to less processing by the Win10 LTSC  file server.

Roon has artwork embedded in the database as well as metadata for music which it thought better than what you entered and some work, usually to correct this behaviour was tedious and annoying.  Box sets are a drama with Roon, do collectively,  with other annoyances,  in particular the attitude of management at Roon, was the nail in the coffin, Roon and I divorced.

Not long after , Roon encouraged members to submit artwork to consolidate Roon's metadata,  which in some respects short circuited work that Roon was supposed to do in the first place.

I've been Roonless for close to three years, don't miss it at all. 

Roon works great for me. Using with Qobuz through my Moon 680D with Mind2. Perfect.

I am sad I am this late to the game on this thread. It’s been a busy week for me. I agree with many individual points I read through this thread, but I thought it might be helpful to summarize it all into a single stream of thoughts.

I whole-heartedly agree that Roon as a software platform is not “supposed” to have a sound. But everything does. That said, it’s sound is indescribable because as others say it is coupled with the hardware and software architectures that are used to run it.

Just as any other interface, Roon has its own memory requirements. Unlike other installable platforms, it requires some more modern capabilities like graphics with OpenGL, and if you plan to use HQPlayer in partnership to upsample your files through Roon (a fairly popular direction for many), then the hardware requirements become even more intensive. When processing increases, it will “generally” introduce more noise into the system. But not in all cases. This will be a major argument for people who opt against Roon - that it is process-hungry, and that it is easier to reach an outcome with Roon that is noisier than other platforms. I often find myself in this boat, but there are some very good solutions that implement Roon properly, including servers like the Grimm MU1 and the Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra, both of which reside north of $10K. But what does that say? Nothing more than the total outcome with Roon depends on the surrounding hardware and software architectures as mentioned above.

The question could then become “How does Roon sound at certain price points”? This allows us to look past just Roon and into the remainder of the streamer/server solution. Too many times Roon is paired with less than optimal hardware which then results in a weaker performance overall. Roon’s own servers, ROCKs and NUCs do not provide the same level of performance as the units mentioned higher above. But do they sound bad? It’s all relative. They will still sound CONSIDERABLY better than the streamer / server inside the Bluesound Node N130 or Bluesound Vault, but they will likely not replace a mid-high-end vinyl rig for many (though it might if convenience is more important than sound quality). But with some units, Roon is good enough to be the primary vehicle for delivering a source.

Yes, Roon’s user interface and smooth experience are a big benefit to it as no other proprietary softwares are as easy to use or sexy to look at. But I do believe there are many excellent options offered where a manufacturer’s software platform is tightly coupled with the hardware that it is designed to run on, while also requiring less processing power overall to run. I also don’t think a subscription should be necessary to pay for the experience. This is why I’ve chosen the Aurender N30SA as my personal reference, and why when I started a high end audio business in April I became an authorized dealer for them.

There is not one “best” solution on the streaming/serving market, and luckily there are many good to great ones!