I am a lifetime Roon subscriber and a long-term audiophile with very high-end digital and analog gear (Denafrips Hermes, MSB Diamond DAC IV, reference-level playback chain). I am frustrated that, despite Roon’s strengths in library management and ecosystem, the platform continues to trail Audirvana Studio (and HQPlayer) for raw sound quality—even when operating with ‘bit-perfect’ mode and exclusive mode from Core to DAC.
On revealing systems, the difference isn’t subtle: Audirvana’s direct and exclusive playback is audibly superior in terms of timing, dynamics, microdetail, and naturalness, while Roon’s architecture—especially under RAAT—adds buffering, multi-room layers, and misses maximal transparency for local single-room listening.
Sound quality is the only reason I (and many others) keep going through painful library workarounds in Audirvana—I’d rather use Roon for everything, but won’t compromise final playback.
Please prioritize a true ‘direct mode’ that completely bypasses RAAT, disables all DSP/process layers, and offers clock-accurate, exclusive output from Core to DAC for single-room setups. The audiophile community is very vocal; this is mentioned again and again in forums, comparisons, and key reviews. Audirvana shouldn’t remain ‘best for sound’ just because of one architectural gap.
I would value an official roadmap update or real technical response; if you need user data or test case info, happy to provide it.
Could not agree more. I hear a significant difference between Roon and Audirvana Studio. That and the annoyances with using Roon on a Mac since the Sequoia release means I’m not renewing my annual subscription. Will stick with Audirvana (which is now more reliable for me when running on a Mac and with my endpoints than Roon, never used to be the case, used to be the other way round). Now if Roon took SQ a little more seriously rather than just adding more and more features that I don’t use then I would reconsider.
I’ve been watching for several years now for a coherent and factual explanation of why ROON seemingly sounds worse than some other music playing software according to some. Seen lots of opinions one way or another, but I often say to myself, people hear all kinds of things, when it comes to music playback.
If ROON really doesn’t sound as good in comparison to some other application, I think it just as likely that the other application may be altering the sound in order to achieve some specific goal. For example certain speaker models seem to boost or cut some frequencies (from a flat response) to “improve” the sound.
I don’t know what the correct sound would be in the case that one hears differences. I guess it might come down to simply personal preference, in the absence of hard factual reasoning as to what the “true” sound is.
The reason I support a direct mode as per this request is that it could eliminate a number of potential variables.
Back to my speaker example, I used to think Revel speakers sounded dull and boring when I first heard them at audio shows after hearing a bunch of other speakers. Now I own a pair of Revels, and think they sound great.
Excuse me for posting these thoughts in this particular thread. It’s just the most recent one like it that gets me thinking. I don’t know any answers, just questions and opinions. I’m going back to listening to Gordon Lightfoot now.
I am convinced that the RAAT protocol is well engineered, bit-perfect, and in principle should not be inferior in sound quality to other, less robust and more straightforward streaming protocols. For that reason, it is difficult to explain why audible differences might occur.
My concern—and the reason for my vote for this feature—is that, in practice, RAAT appears to be challenging for certain combinations of hardware to handle reliably.
In my current setup, the Roon Server is installed on a Synology NAS, and my Bluesound Icon acts as the RAAT receiver. The Icon is normally connected via Ethernet (although I can easily switch to WiFi). To my surprise, I have found that I prefer the sound quality when the Bluesound Icon plays music directly from its own indexed library on the NAS, compared to when the exact same files are played through Roon on the same local network. This is with the most direct signal path in Roon, no DSP enabled, and using device volume.
When listening to 44.1 kHz / 16-bit files, I have also discovered that I prefer setting the “Roon device settings” to 16-bit output rather than 24-bit, as this seems to sound closer to the direct NAS-to-Bluesound playback that bypasses Roon entirely.
My assumption is that these audible differences may be related to the relative complexity of the RAAT stream compared to the more straightforward TCP-based protocol used when the Bluesound Icon plays files directly from the NAS.
My conclusion is that, despite being extremely well engineered, the RAAT protocol may be too demanding for some receivers to handle without compromising the resulting sound quality. This is frustrating, as Roon is in a class of its own in almost every other respect, and it is unfortunate that subjective perceived sound quality may be the one parameter where this issue arises.
