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Sound quality of Roon

I am considering trying Roon.  I have been using my Bluesound Node but I am going to upgrade as I do enjoy streaming more and more using Tidal.  It is quite an investment to get a NUC or Nucleus and then have a separate tablet to control it all.
 

But apart from the cost I have read some people say Roon does not sound good.  Their streamer by blah blah sounds better.  Is this true?  For all that is required to use Roon, the hardware, the subscription and all, would Roon be popular if it made digital streaming sound bad?


I would love to hear people who have experience comment on this.  There is info on the Roon Labs discussion site but as you can imagine it is saying this is BS Roon sounds great.  I guess Roon as a software also has had updates, so maybe this is a thing that might have been true in the past?  

troidelover1499
jjss49's avatar
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jjss49
6,612 posts
 

@vgmbpty

Roon can be very very good, but an App like BubbleUPnP, while not giving so many goodies like UI and DSP, can sound a couple notches better.

do tell, why would this be the case, all else equal (same setup, Roon properly implemented, jitter and noise management handled)??

@grannyring 

i think my point to the op is by using the innuos zen mini 'starter' set, he is equipped to do comparisons for himself and find out

grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,505 posts
 

He could do that and only be out one month’s Roon payment assuming he does not buy a lifetime up front.  

vgmbpty
24 posts
 

@jjss49

This is actually a great question. I believe that it has to do with the shorter signal path (UPnP App-> Player -> Internal SSD) vs Roon which requires a lot of back-and-forth traffic between core, player, etc.  When you condition for good power, low noise, and jitter, issues are reduced a lot, but not 100%.  Of course, this is just speculation based on a purely pragmatic approach.  Also consider that while there is a difference that most will be able to tell easily, it is between great and greater, no bad choices IMO.

 

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jji666
537 posts
 

Vast, vast majority of Roon issues are either user or network issues, I've not had single Roon caused issue in a few years of using it, only time I had issues, my network to blame. Roon forums will also prove this out, Roon pretty much as foolproof as it gets.

Sorry but I couldn’t disagree more with this.  Roon is great but those who post saying they’ve never had a problem are just lucky.  Plenty of power users have had issues too.  If it’s a network issue, why does restarting the software resolve it temporarily?

fittebd
101 posts
 

I agree that statement that is the implementation not the software that causes issues.  How can the Alsace software have issues with person a but the vast majority do not?  I am on all the roon sites including Facebook groups.  It’s NEVER the NUC or Nucleus.  It’s always someone with crappy network or some old PC or MAC.  I support software for 12000+ users.  All different types.  IStandard install that works on 95% of the PCs that share the same image but the few that don’t which always seem to a VP or other VIP break it’s ALWAYS something on the PC. Drivers or something.  It’s a singe pc running many many apps and various things a user downloads.  Roon or any software writers cannot account for the 10 million variations out there.   If you like roon on your trial on your PC invest 700 and get a NUC loaded. Done 

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