“It is patently obvious”, yes, that’s equivalent to “it stands to reason.”
For reference, on option 3, in my experience I have found no audible difference between Nucleus-direct or MicroRendu when driving the Meridian 818v3 or the Hugo 2. Unlike a ten-year old Bel Canto, quite sensitive.
And for reference, on option 2, Archimago did measurements, including a big old PC vs. a Raspberryi, and found little difference:
But I assume that, compared to “patently obvious”, neither my listening nor Archimago’s measurements carry any weight.
Nope. My listening trumps yours for my opinions. A Raspberry Pi 3 B+ is not any quieter than a general purpose PC so I am not surprised by the results. Have him test a well designed and built endpoint like an ultraRendu.
Hugo, I have a very good Meridian 596 CD/DVD player and I can tell you streaming with Roon on a simple home network from my QNAP NAS and Tidal is equal or better consistently. MQA takes this to another level entirely.
Home networks can and should be simple. Cat 5 e and a couple of switches. Then a good audio endpoint.
For me Meridian 218 and MS200’s work a treat as well as Bluesound devices.I have never had a better audio experience with all my varied listening.
Roon have done their bit with RAAT delivering bit perfect signals. After that it’s down to the quality of our own systems and their ability to keep interference out of it. Plenty to tweak with there.
Here’s his review of a Microrendu. Not impressive. Nothing special noise performance. You are welcome to your opinions, but I don’t think you should make sweeping statements about noise, which is measurable and objectively defined, without some numbers to back them up.
I think this test was with the LPS-1 and with an un-shunted “energiser”. Power supply being very important, it would be a lot more revealing to know how it performed with a grounded energiser. Also, these days an LPS-2 or an LPS-1 with the LDO tweak (or another funky power supply).
You are making my point for me. If there’s a problem with noise in some (possibly badly designed) hardware, then the solution for that noise is in fixing or changing the hardware, nothing to do with Roons use of memory,
I say ‘trap’ because I don’t understand what is gained by attaching a CD player (i.e. not a CD transport) which already has a DAC to another downstream DAC.
Would anyone put two external DACs in their chain?
May be using CDP solely as a transport … coax or optical out into external DAC. I kept a CDP connected that way for those odd occasions someone brought a CD along to listen to.
Scott, it’s not about his alleged bias, in a different thread you wrote:
So Amir’s measurements are out.
Archimago’s measurements are irrelevant because he used a Raspberry (even though he measured a lot of 9ther things as well, including the PC).
When I asked if your opinion was based on your measurements or your listening tests, you said it’s patently obvious.
You have argued an architectural point, about using a custom designed device and not a general purpose device. But the Raspberry Pi class of devices do not qualify, nor does the MicroRendu, so its not about system architecture.
So is it really just about the UltraRendu? Which power supply qualifies, in your mind?
Aside from Amir and Archimago, I take from your quote that no measurements would matter. And certainly not anybody else’s listening, as you said above. And not any examples of the archit3ctural separation other than your preferred one. So I wonder, what are we discussing here? And why?
Yes, anything Amir is out and to be avoided like the plague.
The RPi is a noisy animal and, while inexpensive, makes a poor endpoint from a sound quality perspective. Unless, of you course, you add special daughter boards with there own power supply. Then the sound quality improves. It is still not as good as more special purpose devices.
Pick some other well designed endpoint if you want…the sMS200 Neo is good too. The microRendu is good but not as good as the ultraRendu or sMS200 Neo. There are others that are very good and quite a bit more expensive.
IMHO, having tried the lot I don’t find they’re any better than a typical SOC powered by a LPSU that itself generates very little noise and also filters incoming noise. Power of suggestion and all that. Most significant differences came from two things: 1) powering the SOC using the LPSU and 2) if the DAC USB is externally powered, use a dual header USB cable and power the USB port using a LPSU also (very marginal drop in noise floor if SOC is already powered using LPSU). As far as I’m concerned these so called high-end endpoints are nothing but audiophile jewelry.
Totally agree with you. His tests and “measurements “ are pointless 90% of the time. It’s like measuring the sperm count trying to diagnose a patient with a heart condition
This is total balderdash! Roon sounds as good or better than any Squeezelite implementation to which I have listened, including iPeng.
Really Frank, what is your issue here. Fine, you don’t like Roon anymore. You think is sounds terrible and you don’t like the direction they have taken with the interface. I don’t see how Roon could do anything to make you happy. The Roon Core uses a robust TCP-based protocol to get the PCM data to the Roon Endpoints which pass that data on to DACs. Or the Roon Core sends PCM data to DAC directly. What else do you expect them to do? The PCM data can be bit perfect if no DSP functions or volume leveling is used. What does Sqeezelite do differently and better?
It seems you are complaining to just complain as you have no reasonable suggestions on how to improve the sound quality or the UI. Come with reasonable ideas or just go away!
