In my opinion, the UI and UX Roon offers are simply unbeatable. But to get the best sound quality from Roon you will most likely need either a solid, fanless roon core with a good streamer (Lumin seems to work well in this configuration) or the top tier Roon Nucleus + used as both the Roon Core and a streamer. Another option is something along the lines of Grimm MU1, which is both the Roon Core and a streamer that comes at s much higher price.
There are ways to make Roon sound good. However, there are streamers that sound best with their proprietary UI. Auralic is Roon ready but my experience is that you get the best sound from its OS/UI and not using it as a Roon end point.
I'm at a digital loss or getting over UI mountain
So far, I hate digital audio. Let me explain...
I was an early adopter of one of the Olive machines. Easy to use, which was a big plus for my wife but it sounded terrible. Good for some background music. As the company began to disappear, so did its functionality. First the radio left when they stopped paying for it. They stopped supporting the wireless transfer. Then, Gracenote no longer updated etc.
Since then I tried to organize a digital collection in my Mac Mini and iTunes. I have thousands of CDs ripped in ALAC, thousands of pieces in FLAC and MP3. I carefully built a library in iTunes only to lose all the artwork in the iOS upgrade to Music recently. After the Olive, I bought a Sony HAP digital player which upsamples everything and sounds WAY better but, can't seem to categorize things correctly. All the careful work in the Mac Mini is lost in translation.
If I look in Genre: Reggae, for example, there should be thousands of albums and yet there are a handful. There seems to be no way to alter this. Furthermore, try find albums that should be classified as Various Artists - most get lost somewhere. And don't even get me started on Classical music and its filing system.
I usually just go over to my albums and select something to play. It never changes operating systems, its UI is excellent, taxonomy never changes, always sounds good...So why mess around with digital?
I'm intrigued with Roon and wonder if it could solve the UI and taxonomy issues but, I don't know anyone who uses it. Of course, someone just bought it so, will it be around? I can't seem to rely on Apple either although it seemed the best most stable bet.
I've agonized on whether to get a DAC/streamer but library management is most critical to me. I have been looking at the Hifi Rose lineup as I really like the one box solution (easy to use for wife). But if I implement Roon, I still need a computer somewhere to host it. Since I already have the MacMini it seems like a good place to start. However, how to deal with all the UI stuff?
Perhaps hivemind you can help me out here?
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- 10 posts total
- 10 posts total