Bad sound quality with Roon [Resolved, Ethernet Switch]

I don’t get why you want to use shielded twist pair Ethernet. All you are really doing is increasing the chance for the shield to pass noise along. Go with UTP unless you have no other choice.

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I’m not sure whether you have compared LAN cables. In our testing, changing the cable from switch to microrendu from UTP to Cat 7 was a revelation. I do not have a robust technical explanation for this observation.

The only reason that makes any sense is that the environment has too much EMI for unshielded Cat 5e to deal with. That is a lot of EMI.

my 2cents regarding the shielding and ground noise - it’s good practice to have shield connected only on one side - then you can benefit of shielding, while not connecting grounds together…

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Possibly ground / leakage current loops with that shielded Cat 7 cable, via the shield. Leakage currents are closely tied to RF interference also, per the posts linked.

If you are willing to spend $20,000 on cables, why not simplify the Roon setup?
I have a Roon Nucleus with an internal 2 TB SSD, no moving parts anywhere, no rotating disk platters and no fans, and an optimized operating system. Costs less than the VAT on your cables.

Use it to feed a top end Meridian system. No problems.

Hi Anders

Simplify???
I got a synology and you got a nucleus…
I got a Lumin you got meridian…

And the thread is about my frustration that Roon doesn’t sound as good as my lumin. And This doesn’t have anything to do with the cost of My cables.
Have you read the thread from the beginning? If you did you would know that I’ve tried a lot of different things but without any luck.

Again this evening I got a friend over to a listening/testing session (speakers, power cleaner), and in the middle of our testing I made a switch from Roon to Lumin player and my friend looked at me an said WOW… wtf happened?

Regards

Hi Thomas, did you try taking your Synology Roon Core outside the listening room?

Even if you do a temporary test and buy a 20m Cat5e UTP ethernet cable if you don’t have ethernet inside your walls, as a test only.

Run the ethernet cable through your listening room doorway and out into another room. Plug the Synology into a different wall outlet using stock PSU or your existing linear PSU if you want (no need to buy a long power cable /extension for this test).

Hi sean

Yes I’ve tried all that, and with same conclusion… Roon sounds closed and without the live feeling that lumin is playing with.

Regards

Hi Thomas
Are you using the same input to compare? In my case Ethernet was much inferior to USB, like a big difference and I was always of the belief that Ethernet was supposed to sound better than usb

So this is basically a Roon/RAAT vs UPnP/DLNA comparison right, both over the same ethernet input of your Lumin?

I know you said your local dealer has made the same observation but can you ask him to borrow his A1 for a weekend so you can test that other unit in your own setup and listen for yourself?

Could this be a Lumin issue? Neither me nor many others have found UPnP/DLNA better than Roon/RAAT with a variety of other endpoints.

Exactly, which is why I suggested testing another Lumin unit in his own home - I’ve never seen such a night and day observation of Roon vs UPnP by any other Lumin others. Not since the Roon v1.4 update anyway.

Yes I’ve used same input (lan) and I’ve compared it with usb and LAN is superior no doubt!
Btw I have never experienced usb to sound good compared to LAN!

I unfortunately do not have the chance to get another A1 right now.

So my question to you guys is, did any of you actually had the chance to compare two players/programs Like me?
Cause If I didn’t have the chance to make the A/B I would probably think Roon performed and sounded really good

Regards

Yes. All of my personal issues/observations raised regarding RAAT vs UPnP (Roon vs Audirvana) in this thread below disappeared for me with the Roon v1.4 update.

I have the same DS918+ working as Roon Core so this isn’t the bottle-neck with the Lumin but can you try to remove RoonServer from your NAS and re-install the latest RoonServer pkg from scratch?

There isn’t much more we can do for you, obviously Roon doesn’t work for you on the Lumin. Only Lumin is in a position to help you, it’s running on their hardware. Personally I don’t think any upstream changes will make a difference.

You have a preferred playback method, use it and enjoy the music. Roon can’t tune their software just for you, one persons better is another persons harsh or dull. There is no solution to make everyone happy.

I ask this one out of pure curiosity to any Lumin customer or Peter:

Have you tried these things with a 10/100 switch? Have the A1, computer, and NAS on the same 10/100 switch.

Keep all the cables and the power supplies the same. Just swap out for a 10/100. Often times from the same company, the power supply requirements should be the same for both the gigabit and 10/100 models.

Yes. I’ve used a range of streamers and programs over the last few years to feed a range of DACs. I switched to Roon from Minim-based UPnP when my main living room system was Sonore microRendu+UpTone LPS-1>USB>Singxer SU-1>AES>Schiit Yggdrasil>Hegel H360>KEF Reference 1s+REL T7is. My wife, who doesn’t care about gear but has a better musical ear than me (thus she ends up being my tester) actually noticed unprompted an improvement when I fired up Roon 1.3 on that system. Since then, I’ve replaced the whole Ethernet to DAC stack with an Auralic Aries Extreme, and of course Roon has gone to 1.4, and quality went up a notch again. My hypothesis for these differences is that different implementations of the hardware-software stack delivering the bits to a DAC generate different electrical noise profiles on the streamer-to-DAC connection. This also applies to an integrated streamer-DAC. The challenge in all of this is that there are many variables (hardware, software, physical connections, media encodings and transport protocols) that interact in opaque nonlinear ways that affect sound quality if your analog components are resolving enough. At this point, I’ve pretty much stopped iterating, as my three systems are quite satisfactory and I prefer to listen to new (and old) music than to try to split hairs.

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I’m in the same boat now after the Roon v1.4 update - looking/listening for differences with A+ now (for me) is indeed splitting hairs now and not worth my own time. It wasn’t always like this (per my thread linked above) but I’m happy with the current state.

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