Honestly, it took me one day of roon use to decide it would be the central component, everything integrated, and now on to upgrading different amps and speaker systems.
1 Like
I hear you. I’ve just replaced my old Harman Kardon receiver with a Marantz all in one and a Cambridge streamer. I’ve also replaced my old 1960’s/1970’s era Rank Arena speakers with a set of brand new Dali Spektor 2 speakers.
Upgrading along the way. The old set lasted for nearly 20 years. So it was about time for some changes.
2 Likes
Exactly. As they say, “If ya know, ya know”.
I tell friends and clients, if you truly plan on having music as part of your entertainment side in life, ROON is the BIGGEST value one can invest in. Try it for a month or two and see. It’s a perfect audio “product” that grows as you grow.
2 Likes
I’m running Dali Zensor 3s in my office and can’t seem to find a replacement for them, love them, so probably won’t replace them tbh (KEF LS50s I want to try though)
Current pain point is DACs and arguments elsewhere where people claim there’s no difference between any of them. I don’t believe it, and am going to slot in an R-2R for more organic music and a flip or fader between that and an akm velvet which seems to excel at any music which was digitally produced. Next experiment is just that, delta-sigma DAC + R-2R DAC, dual time aligned inputs, then fader to a single amp out, so I can switch or balance the output of each to bias one direction or the other.
Yeah. After trialling it went annual in 2021. After 1,5 annuals I’ve went lifetime late last year. For the old lifetime price. I haven’t regretted it.
2 Likes
Re: Dali, several yrs ago I read some things + viewed a documentary on Dali Speakers brand and was/am impressed with their history, engineering, and quality value proposition. Reminds me of quality researced-based brands(?) like a PSB, Paradigm, Polk Audio, etc.
1 Like
The first DAC I’ve bought was my trusty iFi Zen DAC V2. It is happily connected to my MacBook Pro. Before that I’ve been using USB sound cards.
Early this year I’ve bought a WiiM Mini to upgrade my Harman Kardon receiver with streaming, Bluetooth and AirPlay capabilities.
Didn’t take me very long to come to the decision to do some major upgrades. Bought a Cambridge Audio CXNv2 streamer a few weeks ago, and today my brand new Marantz and Dali speakers arrived.
Tomorrow, if all goes well, the matching stands will arrive for my speakers and I’ll be set for quite some time. The stand should improve the audio quality of the Dali’s even more, while they are already a huge improvement over my old ones.
2 Likes
Yep, nice. I was wishing/drooling for a Sooloos / Meridian-like music library software in the 2000s and fortunately ROON started up 7-8 years ago.
I have a shade of new audio envy, enjoy, there’s nothing better than that first week of relistening to your favourites and hearing them like it’s the first time again. Marantz + older Onkyo’s pair so well with Dali speakers, give a real warmth to the sound. I’ve found they seem to excel with certain genres.
ps, new here, presuming it’s okay to take thread off course from their original post?
2 Likes
That does seem to happen occasionally.
I didn’t know about the Marantz/Dali connection. After choosing the Marantz, I’ve went looking for speakers that would be A. fitting in my small apartment. B. in a similar power range as the Marantz C. affordable. I’ve stumbled upon the Dali’s. Did some reading up, and decided to go for them.
They do pair very well with the Marantz is my experience so far. I barely have to turn up the volume to get a house full of music.
When it comes to DAC’s. I only have experiences with my iFi, the WiiM Mini, my Cambridge and I’m currently testing the DAC in the Marantz.
The iFi and Cambridge sound really good, but it does matter where they are connected to. The WiiM Mini is decent, especially for a 99 Dollar device. The same device costs nearly 170 Euro here in the Netherlands. But it falls short to the Cambridge. The Marantz sounds very good to be honest. It’s not the most expensive Marantz by far. But it does where I’ve bought it for. And it does it very well.
And coming back to the OP’s question.
Of the 4, only the Cambridge is Roon Ready, has Tidal Connect and has Chromecast build in.
PM6007? If so you essentially have the new incarnation of the setup I ran for years, had the previous version of it, and the Zensor 3s which were the predecessor to the Spektor 2s 
I swapped to an onkyo half way through as it was a touch “warmer” again. Now full topping as per earlier posts, and honestly difference is night and day, however a large portion of that is roon + qobuz lossless tbh.
https://www.marantz.com/en-gb/product/network-audio-players/m-cr612 I’ve went for this all-in-one with the Silver/Gold color scheme. I didn’t go for an amplifier only. 
2x60 Watt with 2 speakers attached. It can also serve a second pair of speakers. Then it’s 4x30 Watt. Its HEOS app is pretty decent, it doesn’t support Qobuz though. It does do Tidal and Deezer, which I’m also using next to Qobuz and Apple Music.
But streaming Qobuz isn’t that much of a problem as my Cambridge streamer is connected to the Marantz. And both Roon and its own StreamMagic app support Qobuz without issues.
1 Like
Potentially useful for you to know @SandsOfArrakis - I have been running the equivalent speakers to you for a few years, moved about 10 months ago and have never been happy with them since, some of the “warmth” was gone. It boiled down to speaker placement and limited options, I used to have them +50cm from the “wall” and nothing either side of them in my old 6mx6m sitting room.
Now they’re relegated to my office in new house, with ~10-20cm space behind them. Long story short the rear port on them was cancelling out the warm frequency ranges, together with the dac+new amp cleaning up signal and making them “brighter” (or less colored by new amp vs old). I’d never understood why people described them as bright until I changed their placement and what was driving them.
A great test song was Kate Bush “Running up that Hill”, it just sounded very wrong, remaster or not. You can use this to sanity test your setup too I guess.
Minor gains were made swapping from cambridge audio ultra 100 wires (silver coated) to pure copper awg 12s (in europe, kabeldirekt 4mm2) which took the edge off the high range.
However, today I took delivery of Triangle Borea BR03, and not only are they (considerably) better, not even run in yet, but because they’re front ported all that warmth and true sound has came back. Previously was considering KEF LS50 Meta’s and similar, but the porting seems to make all the difference for my particular placement restrictions.
Now I’m thinking the amp could be stronger… but may need balanced, so a new dac too, though my wife would disagree.
One other minor note, with the DALI’s I found that speaker stand height made quite a difference, at what level that tweeter is, depending on your placement and seating position you may find a noticeable difference between 60cm and 70cm stands.
So it arrived and setup went smoothly, however, I seem to loose connection to the core everyday and only rebooting the beelink Ubuntu server seems to solve it. Any ideas?
I seem to loose connection to the core everyday and only rebooting the beelink Ubuntu server seems to solve it. Any ideas?
Sounds networky, is the local ip address of the device changing? If so, assign it a static IP address or adjust the DHCP lease time if you can.
1 Like
This would be my replacement as well, if I needed one at the moment.
There seems to be nothing wrong with this device, although I would probably go for the Pro Plus due to the better DAC chip.
2 Likes
I’ve had a WiiM Mini in the past that I later gifted to my parents who now use i as an Internet radio.
It’s DAC, which is the same as the WiiM Pro, isn’t that great. Unless you connect it digitally and have the external connected DAC handle the music.
The newer WiiM Pro Plus uses a different DAC. And from what I’ve been reading it’s superior in quality.
1 Like
It’s a great little device and we have one of these and the Pro Plus.
Regular updates with new features as well.
I bought the plus for my FIIO K5 Pro to give me flexibility at a later date with Analogue outs etc but I use it with the digital outputs.
Great value and streams perfectly across all protocols for me.
1 Like