Does Roon improve sound quality?

It just manages metadata from, and the access to, different music sources.  No effect on SQ.

Roon has a DSP with lots of settings for you to play with - upsampling, parametric eq, and a whole bunch of other stuff that you probably don't need! Best to do the free trial, and see for yourself. I haven't played with these features much, so can't really comment on their effect on sound quality. What I did notice is that sound quality was not as good with a wireless connection from the computer I use as a Roon Core to my wired network. With a wired connection, I would say that sound quality was comparable to streaming the same ripped CD over regular UPnP, but not better.

Just installed last night a NUC 7i5 as my dedicated Roon ROCK streamer powered by a linear power supply. Oh boy does it sound good! Upsampling Redbook to DSD128 via the microRendu and DAC V1 and it’s like a proverbial black box upgrade. I think the server hardware set up makes a difference as much or more than the software. Having just trialed Roon and purchased a lifetime membership, to me it brings the excitement back to my collection not by sound quality but by better management. Combined with Tidal it’s like having your own record store at home. Also the shuffle and radio functions blow Naim out of the water. Highly recommend. 

Roon can also be used as a renderer on computer platforms (though in such use much depends on the implementation, including  the outputs used and the effectiveness of RF isolation. From what I have managed to pick up on balance is that it’s sound quality in that mode is not as good as that of optimised Audirvana, but it has been improving.

But AFAIK this function is not used when Roon is used as an interface with a device like the Star or Nova, so it would not affect sound quality.

Charlesphoto , what linear power supply are you using on the NUC ? 

In my opinion on my MacBook Pro with output to Loewe Klang 1 with subwoofer (in my study) Audirvana has much better sound quality than Roon.

charlesphoto posted:

Just installed last night a NUC 7i5 as my dedicated Roon ROCK streamer powered by a linear power supply. Oh boy does it sound good! Upsampling Redbook to DSD128 via the microRendu and DAC V1 and it’s like a proverbial black box upgrade. I think the server hardware set up makes a difference as much or more than the software. Having just trialed Roon and purchased a lifetime membership, to me it brings the excitement back to my collection not by sound quality but by better management. Combined with Tidal it’s like having your own record store at home. Also the shuffle and radio functions blow Naim out of the water. Highly recommend. 

Charlesphoto,

where did you run roon before the dedicated NUC and was it complex to build a NUC for roon? I run my roon on macmini for now...

thanks!

Terrysmi posted:

Charlesphoto , what linear power supply are you using on the NUC ? 

Just an inexpensive ebay Chinese R-Core. As good if not better then my HDPLEX imo. 

T38.45 posted:

charlesphoto posted:

Just installed last night a NUC 7i5 as my dedicated Roon ROCK streamer powered by a linear power supply. Oh boy does it sound good! Upsampling Redbook to DSD128 via the microRendu and DAC V1 and it’s like a proverbial black box upgrade. I think the server hardware set up makes a difference as much or more than the software. Having just trialed Roon and purchased a lifetime membership, to me it brings the excitement back to my collection not by sound quality but by better management. Combined with Tidal it’s like having your own record store at home. Also the shuffle and radio functions blow Naim out of the water. Highly recommend. 

Charlesphoto,

where did you run roon before the dedicated NUC and was it complex to build a NUC for roon? I run my roon on macmini for now...

thanks!

I actually found one pre-assembled with 8gb of RAM and a 256gb drive for $340. Essentially the drive and ram were free. They’re cheap makes but if I was to do it separately and wasn’t on a tight budget, I’d go for a Samsung EVO NVME drive. That said a quick glance at the instructions it looks as easy as getting your fingers inside the tiny box. Roon has a great walk through on how to set the BIOS, install ROCK etc. Took me about half an hour and I was up and running. 

I ran the Roon trial on my 2013 Mac Pro desktop. Lots of horsepower but didn’t sound nearly as sublime as it does now. Plus I didn’t like mixing work and pleasure. I still use the Mac Pro as an endpoint feeding my UQ in the office via Toslink. Same increase in sq imo, though I’d rather not use toslink. Maybe I’ll add a pi there at some point. 

many thanks! I'll have a closer look at that....maybe I'll go for a roon hw system in future (provided by roon itself)

Well, it’s your $. From what I’ve seen of the official Roon hw one may as well do it yourself for a fraction of the cost. Plus they only offer the i3 and i7 versions, and from bench tests the i5 is only about 20% less powerful than the i7 but uses a lot less power and therefor less fan noise. I’m sure if you’re not comfortable doing it all yourself find a teenager that can get it all up and running for $50 and some pizza. A fanless Akasa case runs about $120-150 (less in UK and Europe). 

Just googled...sonictransporter i7 sounds good, comes ready to operate and has enough ppwer for dsp etc...

Great choice. If I had the extra $ what I would go for. The Vortexbox I bought from them has worked great for the last seven years. You may want to check out the Innuos Zenith SE as well if $ not an issue. 

Innuos is on my list as well as an endpoint for roon. I have a rendu now as endpoint, so I find your comment about SQ interesting when moving the server from Mac to dedicated HW! Audiostream reported similar things moving to sonictransport i5... and some say digital is only 1 and 0 ;-)