Roon Discussion

I don’t follow. I don’t have of that type of stuff as part of Roon. Are you referring to Roon Radio? If so, I have the opposite experience with it. I find the new music it suggests to really be a fantastic music discovery tool.

 

No, I’m just referring to Tidal’s hone screen outside of Roon. I used to use Tidal’s app on my phone.

yeah, Roon radio is dope

 

Besides Roon, the Qobuz app also uses TiVo and has the same reviews. In addition to reviews, they both also use TiVo for artist information. TiVo (Allmusic) has an outsized influence in the music industry because so many businesses license their database.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/53d...rnets-largest-most-influential-music-database

Side note: Recently, Roon also began to license information from Wikipedia. For some things such as artist/composer information, you can view both sources.

 

Does anyone else here use iFi Zen Stream in Roon Exclusive Mode? I finally figured out how to get it to output USB yesterday in Roon Exclusive Mode and it was decent increase in sound quality over AIO mode using Roon. The background got blacker and detail extraction increased secondarily. I’m debating trying out another streamer (Holo Red or iFi Neo Stream) to see if it can sound better than Zen Stream. In my reading I came across the tip to try Roon Exclusive Mode.
Am I crazy or having expectation bias or is there actually an increase in sound quality with Roon Exclusive Mode on Zen Stream? Anybody with similar experiences with other streamers? Any plausible software or hardware explanations as to why this mode seems to sound better?

 

I do not own Ifi streamer, but one reason may be that switching to Exclusive mode is turning off unnecessary processes and hence reduction in noise due to lesser processing etc.

 

How did you solve this? I ran in Exclusive Mode for a while, but learned (from iFi) that you cannot use both Coax and USB so I reverted back to AIO.

And yes, iFi says that going to Exclusive mode stops a lot of unnecessary, jitter-inducing processes if you are only using Roon.

 

Any suggestions for a wireless powered speaker that can do both airplay and roon? I have a device that only does airplay now but will do roon sometime in the future and an old sonos play:1 that's driving me crazy.

 

KEF's LS50 II and LSX II both support... basically everything. They're not as reliable as you'd hope, though.

 

Anything smaller than that? The Sonos Play:1 is about the right size.

 

Roon > Settings > Audio > iFi Zen Stream
Right above click or press on the words “Device Info” then press on “Configure Device”
Roon will open page that you can change the output of the Zen Stream.

I hope this helps and let me know what you think of the sound.

 

can someone address sound quality, lots on tech stuff, does it sound really good. how does it compare to other products. appreciate your thoughts I read through this and did not see anyone talking about it, maybe I missed it
best,
Josh

 

If you ask me, as long as your network is stable, the software you use for streaming does not make any difference whatsoever. (As long as the data isn’t altered, of course, like adding EQ, upscaling etc.)

This is an area where “it’s digital, don’t worry” actually makes sense. The receiving end checks if the data is correct using checksums, and if it isn’t, it asks the sender to retransmit. You either get dropouts or 100% bit-perfect data; there’s nothing in between. So I can’t see where the transmission software should be relevant. (It might be relevant when the network is bad. When the buffer on the receiving end is small, and/or it often has to ask for retransmissions. Well-done protocols like Roon’s RAAT can help by giving the receiver end the possibility to tell how much to send how quickly etc. Thus, you’ll get less dropouts in less-than-ideal situations. But not more air, less digititus, better resolution etc. EDIT: Unless having to ask for retransmission often has such effects because the CPU has to work more, maybe?)

Note that this is different from USB Audio or S/PDIF connections, be it optical or coax. In these cases, the receiver can’t ask for retransmission, these are one-way protocols.

Also, audiophile switches might make a difference, but not because they transfer the data more exactly, but because they try to reduce electrical noise on the ethernet cable, which thus won’t enter the receiving device.

But I really don’t think that data transmission software can alter sound quality apart from reducing dropouts.

The good stuff about Roon is the UI, the DSP functions, the metadata and more, not the sound quality of its transmission protocol.

 

I agree and yet it does seem to work better with my Sonos than Sonos' own software.

 

Do they play from the same source? I do think that Spotify sounds different from Qobuz, e.g., enough that I think it’s not only the lossy codec but Spotify trying to “improve” the sound (and failing).

 

I disagree, a sufficiently resolving enough setup can reveal differences between software used as well as the OS it's being run on. Fortunately, Roon ranks pretty highly, there are a few other programs that some would say sound better but at great cost of convenience.

 

appreciate your thoughts, using music bee, it sounds great and servies my needs for now. Considering Roon

 

Roon is the best sounding software I’ve used. I used JRiver up until about 3 years ago. I tried Roon via a trial a few times as they updated the software until I felt it was better than JRiver and then went with them.
I would strongly recommend a trial or just pay for a month and see for yourself. If you already did a trial before just email customer service and ask if you can get another trial.
Contrary to @zottel opinion, I feel Roon is superior because of RAAT and everything else is just icing on the cake.

 

Even if it would be better (debatable) the monthly subscription is not for everyone, definitely not for me. I will keep using JRiver for this reason.