I gave up for the same reason , a nightmare in classical music navigation
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i was just playing with audirvana, testing the doors la woman 2021 remaster 50th anniversary version… audirvana sounded less alive, kind of tight, bass kind of anemic… but roon, oh my. The album sounds ALIVE! Like if i were right in the studio! No audirvana for me.
I dont understand why everyone says audirvana sounds better. I just couldnt set it up to sound better than roon. Not sure whats the deal
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Same experience
Meanwhile Audirvana 3.0 officially:
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Currently running it on DietPi with iPhone 16 Pro Max as remote.
Having used Audirvana before 3.0, during the 3.0 beta I can say they’ve done a lot of work. Much better.
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I just gave it another spin as well. The interface still needs a lot of work and is nowhere near as good as Roon but better than it was before. Certainly is snappy and easy to set up and navigate around, but doesn’t have nearly as many bells and whistles as roon. Granted in my system downstairs, I use everything with HQ player even so I still thought Roon plus HQ player sounded a bit more lively than Audirvana plus HQ player.
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I attempted to subscribe to Audirvana 3.0 Monthly Studio Classic only to be told there was a system error and to “try again later.”
That’s all the Roon user’s trying to sign up for a few months 
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Maybe you checked whether Qobuz randomly adds what it wants also in Audirvana Studio 3.0 - as it lately happens in Roon?
Yes I thought that I would check it out for a month or so. I tried Audirvana a while back (a much earlier version) and stopped it as I’ve preferred ROON. I have to admit that I’m curious to see what the newest Audirvana version has to offer.
I am seeing the same thing across multiple music forums. I already have Roon, LMS, BubbleUPNP and Plex Server (with Symfonium as a front end) so I think I have it covered for now, though I imagine FOMO will get the better of me at some point 
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Audirvana 3.0 Studio has some bugs. Getting a few “beach balls” on my new M5 MacBook Pro with simple operations. Then, the program shuts down and requires a restart.
I haven’t noticed it, but this is really not a new problem. I have had this issue with Qobuz in roon for multiple years now. It just seems to be impacting more people for whatever reason. I have a big library of over 400K tracks so my recently added gets messed up whenever this occurs. I wouldnt see why it wouldn’t happen in Audirvana either but dont use it that much. I have had Audirvana since 2012, JRiver since about same time, and Roon since Day 1 of it launching…it consistently works (albeit slowly at times) and the UI better than anything available…at one point I did think Audirvana sounded better circa 2019…but no longer the case IMO…either no diff at all or slight edge to Roon…but again its the interface that just crushes the competition.
Always one to support the underdog 
, I too am having a look at AS3
Lets hope they have fixed their sort issues
Well, yes, but the UI is a matter of taste; even if it’s not perfect, it’s ultimately tolerable. However, the random addition of Qobóz albums is objectively a serious dysfunction that’s annoying?
The look of the UI is definitely a matter of personal taste. I find the Roon Ui really very ugly. However the content is excellent. It has many more features than competing players however that comes with a price of overhead. Comes down to choice, I prefer a player that does not chew resources and is not overloaded with features that I don’t use. I would rather not know the names of the 40 contributors to a Peter Gabriel track if it means I have to allocate 4 hours daily for my Roon app to commune with the mothership!
Studio 3.0 was an improvement in DSP but the UI has expanded in size making it less seamless with my OS of choice, a bit more Roon like with oversized fonts compared to OS system fonts. Horses for courses as they say. As far as sound quality goes well that is a figment of the brain of the individual doing the auditioning. The last time I conducted my demi-decade, volume levelled, blind test there was however a clear winner in number of preferences which I assumed was just the “sacred geometry of chance” as Sting referred to it but of course it only reinforced my confirmation bias towards one of the main players……Each to his own……
Quick question < do you listen classical music , so far AS3 is a disaster < missing artists, albums mixed together
I’ll persevere but it’s no better than AS2 in that respect. Same design errors
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To be honest, Roon hasn’t worked well for me, particularly when it comes to filtering the classical database.
However, I respect your opinion and don’t want to complain; I believe there’s room for different experiences and approaches.
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I couldn’t keep myself from trying Audirvana Studio now that V3 was just released. My findings have been:
- No “Roon Radio” in Audirvana
- The Audirvana Remote runs only on mobile, no desktop. Sure, with Mac you can run iOS apps, but that’s fiddling, and sub-par IMHO
- I ran Audirvana on a Windows VM, as I thought I can use a VM window on my Mac intead of a full Desktop remote. It works, but a bit subpar, since you work on a full Windows VM window rather then a desktop app
- Running like that, in a unactivated Windows version, the Windows watermark sits smack on top of the audio controls. Call me OCD, but that bothered me
- The Tidal integration in Roon is richer. You get more content, such as Tidal playlists & suggestions
- I linked my Home Assistant integration to Roon, it allows me to do fancy stuff, like sending volume commands to my Sofabaton remote.
- Changing some settings on the fly to try different sound profiles (convolution, PEQ) means you have to hit that unlock button (WASAPI exclusive mode), so contrary to Roon where you can change the audio control on the fly and listen to the effects, with Audirvana it’s hitting unlock-changing-restarting, can me OCD (AGAIN :-)) but that’s not as user friendly.
- I run a Docker with a Hifi Rose RS151, not the quickest (1-2 seconds) when it comes to track skipping, but with Audirvana it’s even slower.
- There are no “Audirvana Playlists” like the Roon teams maintain
I did read some opinions Audirvana would sound better, but diving deeper, those statements only relate to a PC to DAC USB connection, and that’s not my setup. And it seems also to be biased by the output volume. In my setup, between RAAT & UpNP, I think anybody would be hard-pressed to hear any (noticeable) difference.
On the UI, yes, it’s a bit different, but nothing transcendent, nothing putting the way you listen to music upside down. It remains a question of taste.
Add to that the wide choice of Roon deployments, OS as well as desktop/remotes, I keep getting to the same conclusion. GIMME ROON ANY DAY.
So, all in all, still kudo’s to the Roon teams, the engineers, the UX teams as well as the team maintaining those playlists. And still a happy kamper here.
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I have had a few days with AS3 , just to add my comments . This is a clean install on an equally clean W11 new PC
Firstly @ZeGB not single comment about ease of Navigation , makes me think that you are not a classical fan. Just a few howlers I have spotted so far
- Some obscure conductor called Claudio Abbado is invisible , go to C for Claudio Nil, go to A for Abbado NIL, so suitably inspired go to B for Berlin Philharmonic and there he is mixed up in the B’s. Sort_Name is set as Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Claudio Abbado. A crystal ball helps.
- The same goes for say Alfred Brendel. In chamber collaborations artists are displayed as say “Alfred Brendel, Cleveland Quartet” under A . Each collaboration getting a separate entry. Whereas in single artist albums itis displayed under B for Brendel, Alfred. Nowhere can you see a list of all albums that Alfred Brendel is involved with. any artist who joins chamber ensembles is treated the same eg Sviatoslav Richter
- It’s not uncommon to have multiple albums with the same name eg. Vivaldi: Four Seasons or Beethoven: Piano Sonatas . Four Seasons, navigate to your favourite version and you will find no less that 7 albums merged together. Sorted by Track #, so you get Spring movt 1 7 times then movt 2 7 times etc. No way to separate out any one artists
- Beware AS3 writes to your files and not just to a db like Roon .I am just finishing restoring my BU. This was calculating the volume levelling data
You can workaround these issues say by adding the artist to the album title eg Vivaldi: Four Seasons - Kennedy, but that is bound to screw up Roon ID as that is not the album name in Tivo or MusicBrainz
Even setting a Sort_Name tag manually doesn’t help group artists. I changed the Berlin Philharmonic one to simply Claudio Abbado Save , nothing changed
The db is SQLite so can be opened and browsed to try and better understand how things tick.
I am too old to differentiate between players SQ my hearing is 75 yrs old, but just on navigation alone Roon has absolutely no worries . What a waste of money , i should have saved it to subsidise petrol
I know Roon gets its share of bug complaints butt these are quite simply design errors let alone how they are implemented
I have offered my help in reporting what I see BUT ….
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