Difference is a strong statement from my point of view, hence I called it preference. It may sound silly but even on Gbics I found a preference.
After several months of use, I can say that for me Roon is the less qualitative solution in term of sound quality compared to Audirvana & the native Naim App (at least on my Naim).
Sure, it has a nice way to display the contents and provides smart suggestions but it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do at the most basic level : properly aggregate contents ! Lots of albums aren’t detected from my NAS and it’s a purely arbitrary (you have to force the rescan many times and eventually an album it didn’t detect a week ago will appear).
A bug like random reboot app when using an iPhone and the insanely high price tag for a “dysfunctional” app make me regret the investment. Perhaps Roon’s team will fixe these things, but at the moment I can’t recommend the investment to anyone.
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All the talk of Audirvana, I loaded it ( I mistakenly bought a license in a fit of madness) and started using the iOS app.
I lasted all of 7 minutes, what a mess , how do people manage it.
I must be missing something 
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The iOS app is just a remote for the main app installed on your computer - it does not have an autonomous function of its own.
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I know that , but the remote app is what I am going to use. I have a Sever - Renderer set up with a Cambridge Audio CXN . My server is in a completely different room to my CXN so I want to use it as a standard, Server - Renderer - Controller system . I never use my Core PC to do anything other than maintenance and importing , after that is all done from my listening spot with an iPad
My comment is that I find the Remote completely wanting when it comes to music selection , its slow, under featured and generally not too friendly
I appreciate some people think the sound is superior to Roon but from my point of view I couldn’t use it for long enough to notice the whole experience was off putting
I use Audirvana in a streaming context with HRA only. Useage with local files is a cumbersome experience. If you have experience with Roon there is a high chance you reject Audirvana, because it is very basic in comparison. I never could detect a sound difference. One or the other being better or worse, even though I tried. I hope HRA will be integrated into Roon as a streaming service. This would be the perfect outcome for me.
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I’m of the same opinion as @miklats.
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Same here - and that’s the sad thing: if HRA Streaming were integrated into Roon, we would have no need to resort to Audirvana to stream HRA content to the DACs.
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195 posts were merged into an existing topic: Audirvana Studio
I have been Audirvana user since april 2012 when I bought my first Aud. license. I followed closely Roon development over the years. Roon 1 year license bought just 45 days ago and trialed versions from 1.6. Now about sound quality, Roon 1.6 was on par with Audirvana and not at the same level with 1.7. If the sound quality on 1.8 would have been the same as the previous version (1.7) I wouldn’t use it even if it was for free. The sound on 1.8, in my systems (all 3 of them, only local 150k track library) the sound is perfect, has more weight, I feel it much fuller than with Audirvana 3.5 and Studio, which to my ear sounds tiring in a short time. The only setup which reaches the sound level of Roon 1.8 is Minimserver + Mconnect (Mac/IOS) but I will pay the price every year for Roon due to great library management if the sound remains the same in the future.
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I really don’t understand these discussions about sound quality anymore. Let’s assume for a moment your DAC does proper asynchronous processing and both audirvana and roon are able to send bit perfect streams via usb (since years really). What remains? Yes of course noise and other unwanted signals via USB. Putting for instance a good galvanic usb isolator in between gets us rid of this for sure. What remains then to the software? Nothing I’d say. Driving the DAC directly via USB from a Windows Core with everything (WLAN, graphics, …) of course influences the sound. Some DACs already have proper galvanic isolation and reclocking - I wonder what audirvana or roon then possibly can do in terms of sound if everything else is the same. DSP measures to colorate the music for our ears is something to exclude here. I just use a wired ropieee bridge with intona usb isolator with a very good low noise power supply. The DAC is reclocking. I did many experiments based on that setup. The sound is just perfect. No matter what software I use to feed it with as long the signal path remains bit perfect.
OS and software latency maybe…
I’ve seen several audio OS and software that emphasize latency (especially for the USB connection).
bit perfect stream + reclocking in DAC (asynchronous). What latency could possibly apply? Is that theoretically even possible? That confuses me.
I’m not an expert, but you can find info on the manufacturers’ websites:
https://euphony-audio.com/https://euphony-audio.com/
…and others.
Thank you!
And sorry for my bad english…
It sounds to me as if there is no USB delivery to an asynchronous DAC in this setup thus clocking and jitter depend indeed on the “streamer”. Therefore I would assume for asynchronous setup the quality of the DAC reclocking and processing (maybe also upsampling) is the only important thing if no other dirty signals are submitted via USB.
In other setups in which soundcards are involved or a synchronous digital signal is submitted to a DAC I found Windows is not really good in doing this. For that reason audirvana provides a set of additional measures to get Windows focusing on music reproduction mainly.
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I just received a Nucleus Plus, and the only aspect of Audirvana 3.5 that I prefer is that I could create custom playlists by historical periods (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary, plus a separate one for guitar and piano, but I don’t seem to be able to create anything similar so far) and Audirvana kept Qobuz tracks together in playlists until I clicked on an album cover, then it showed the individual tracks. Roon separates out the album tracks as soon as I open the playlist.
I didn’t want to open a new topic. That said, as this topic was opened 2019 and so many things have changed.
I’m a very happy Roon user for many years + lifetime user.
I recently installed Audirvana and compared it with Roon. ( default settings)
Just to pick a song to help you understand what what I’m comparing
The song . “close to you” from the carpenters PCM ( CD) sounds more open and the acoustic instruments are just more present in a positive way via Audirvana than Roon. That said… I also have that same song in DSD ( SACD) and now it’s the other way around. Roon is here better one. ( DOP )
Roon uses RAAD perhaps that can be implemented differently on the bridge. I’m not fingerprinting to Harry vd Berg ( i.m using ropieee XL ) for Harry is doing an amazing job and we all should be thankful for his work. But if it is not the bridge… then what else can be causing this difference ?
Like I said there’s no negativity here and I trust my hearing.
any thoughts ?
Roon’s RAAT protocol is proprietary cross platform code, not open to be manipulable in the sense you seem to imply.
But what meaningful insights do you expect to wring from this thread, if you tend to believe in anecdotal reports about technically inexplicable and immeasurable influences, seem to neglect the influence of psychological biases on the auditory process, but trust in the infallibility of your hearing?
Maybe it’s due to your undisclosed system components and interconnection choices that introduce unpredictable and erroneous behavior into the mix?
If your response is representative how we communicate here on this forum then I’m already depressed.
No, it’s just representative of how I react to post-factual posts like yours, sometimes.
Feel free to ignore my blurb …
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