Network stuff is all worked out and working properly.
But sound quality? Don’t give me that mood woo woo stuff. There is absolutely no question that sound quality has taken a real hit with roon. If roon can’t fix it soon, roon is going away from my system. Here is what I posted in another forum:
I recently added a roon nucleus, switching from mconnectHD, streaming from Qobuz to my Bricasti DAC. There is no question that roon sounds different - and according to my sensibilities WORSE: muffled, with a loss of detail, ambiance, and nuance. I am not a happy camper.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
22
This is all system synergy dependant.
I performed a test a few weeks back with various streaming control solutions.
Mconnect HD was by far the bottom of the pile, below bubbleupnp and Roon.
Just goes to show how different setups and people will see/ hear things differently.
Does not really mean Roon is bad or mconnect is bad etc.
Regarding system dependency, I can accept that. I am not trying to smear roon. But my system is very good, high resolution, and quite musical. Changing the system to work better with roon is the tail wagging the dog. Roon will either provide much better sound quality (in my system) than it does now or it will go away.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
24
And that I can accept fully, I would not be changing my system either if all I had tried was mconnect and Roon and desperately wanted mconnect to sound better.
It is what it is.
Just sorry you are not experiencing Roon at its best in your system.
Mconnect always sounded a bit meh for streaming services as it pulls to the phone then out to the endpoint. Can’t say I noticed any difference between it and any other UPnP controller for local music as it goes direct and not via the phone unless your source files are on the phone. All sounded the same as Roon on my Naim system when you adjust for volume differences.
Nothing woo woo about mood affecting your hearing, if I am overly tired, had too much too drink, feeling under the weather my system doesn’t sound as good as the days I am tickety boo and top form and had just the right amount of drink.
Just to ask you are using the Roon ready connection to the Bricasti and not Airplay or anything else by mistake. Others have made this simple mistake before. I’m sure you haven’t but worth an ask.
There are different versions of mconnect, but to my knowledge none send from the phone to the DAC. Certainly none that I have used over the years have done that. Likely that is why you think mconnect sounds meh… I would guess you somehow have it misconfigured.
I also have a NuPrime Stream9 using Omnia Receiver software to deliver to my DAC, and it sounds very much like mconnect direct to the Bircasti, both sound much better than roon in my current implementation: Nucleus > ethernet > Bricasti M3 > Benchmark LA4 > Jeff Rowland 535 mono blocks > KEF Reference 1 with subs. This is a very high resolution system.
Definitely not using Airplay or anything like it. All ethernet cat 8. What is roon ready? I connected the Nucleus and followed the instructions for downloading software and setup. I am not using any of the DSP stuff, just a straight up signal.
Re mood, I am in my 70’s and have a pretty firm understanding of its influences. I defer judgements until I am in a receptive mood and confirm on other occasions.
Roon Ready is how you should be connected to the Bricasti with Roon over the network. You are connected over the network I assime. In Audio settings you should see under the Roon Ready section Tr Bricasti like I see my Naim. Here is where you would enable it for Roon to send it over the network. This then uses the Roon code inside the Bricasti to stream to it via the network.
As for mconnect how else do you think it gets Qobuz from the app to the streamer. It has to go through their app to bridge it to UPnP transport so it can receive it. If you have UPnP server it just acts as a controller for that to send the stream but for streaming services its from their app to device. I used to use it myself so have a good understanding of how it works. The Bricasti does not have Native Qobuz streaming so has no other way to receive a Qobuz stream unless it has the hardware mconnect network card. Does the Bricasti have this?
Hmmm. I don’t have anything that looks like your screen grabs, and I see nothing that is called Roon Ready. I can select devices from a popup in the roon app though. In the lower right corner it shows the device playing to. If I click it I get a pop up that shows other devices to select. To the right of that is a speaker icon that when clicked gives access to various options and play parameters.
Regarding mconnect, as long as we are beating that to death, I am certain you are mistaken. All the app does is connect to the server to tell it what to send to the Bricasti. Once it is playing I can reboot the phone, turn it off, or put it in my pocket and leave the house and it will keep doing its thing. If it were playing through the phone that would not be possible.
PS, don’t mistake this for a lack of appreciation for your attempts to help.
