Aurender to Roon Core?

@jjss49 

The respect is mutual as I always appreciated your point of view and contributions here. But I must disagree with you on couple of things, 

1) roon is a software overlay, it does not have a sound - If you think ROON algorithm does not impact the data stream and final sound then you’re living in a bubble my friend. Let’s leave aside the fancy interface and its library management capabilities for a moment and focus on its impact on sound. Each of these software apps, ROON, XDMS, Sense and Conductor have a sound or sonic signature. There has been ongoing discussions about XDMS and Sense sounding better than ROON using the same hardware and implementation. I never said ROON sounds bad but as others have confirmed and what I’ve found by comparing ROON with Conductor, ROON is manipulating (altering) the data stream to a point where both Qobuz and local files sounds bit glossy or unnatural to my ears. This has been my conclusion after listening through ROON over 18 months now. In my system, both ROON and Aurender are implemented meticulously as far as hardware and cost goes, both connected to a very good DAC over Ethernet. 

2) to say anything is done in this case is ’philosophical’ is rather bleary eyed and naive in my view - I suggest you read up on why Aurender chose to implement low-power high-efficiency Intel CPUs and what their software engineers are doing to specifically optimize playback performance. 

3) Agreed

4) but why does roon have so many customers? -  Let’s toss this into personal preferences, budget constraints, hardware options and biases. 

The landscape of streaming looks pretty darn good for everyone involved in developing hardware, software, streaming services and end users. It’s a perfect time to embrace streaming based on our budget and personal preferences. 

Latik is correct in that Roon and the other music players each have unique sound qualities. I have multiple choices available to me at present, Stylus which is Euphony's proprietary player, HQPLayer and Roon, each has unique settings and sound quality.

Some contend Roon sound inferior to various proprietary music players, that may be true for their own individual setup. Roon's great interface may negatively affect SQ in some cases in that it's complex interface may require greater use of available processor capacity, which may result in more noise generated by streamer. Proprietary music player apps may have advantage in that manufacturer has optimized player for the specific hardware used in streamer, I presume this is what Aurender Conductor users are hearing.

I'd suggest Roon SQ is highly variable since it can interface with wide variety of streamers. Because of this judgments of SQ highly subjective.  With my present streamer Roon core is using less than 1% of processor resources, Roon SQ wonderful, at least on par with Stylus and HQPlayer although still have multiple configuration to experiment with.

@lalitk 

+1

If I wanted to produce the best streamers possible I would not consider letting anyone in. I would want to control every aspect. It is not a negative that Roon isn’t supported, as far as I am concerned it is a positive. Aurender is not criticizing, simply controlling their environment. Apple vs open systems. With 40 years of experience in IT, I would choose closed every time.

@sns

You’re spot on in your assessment of various players having unique sound characteristics. I have friends who swears by and prefers HQPlayer SQ over ROON by a wide margin where HQPlayer is the final arbiter. IMHO, this is by far probably the best configuration for those who prefer the ROON interface and library management. ROON can be configured to implement HQPlayer into a Zone, where HQPlayer takes the stream of bits from media files from ROON. This allows the end users to enjoy the benefits of HQPlayer SQ and the library management capabilities of Roon at the same time.

​​​As I have said earlier, Aurender or a similar player that are in unique position to optimize the music player (app) and design its own custom hardware are primed to deliver high performance with consistency for the end users.