Roon does not sound terrible but it could sound so much better. Until Roon loads and plays a song out of memory it will not be better than the Squeezelite implementation. And it’s easily discernible. I’m angry because they could do this and I wouldn’t have to use an inferior iPeng software to get better sound.
I still like Roon. It has great potential. But after 3 years I’m not happy with the rate of progress or the response to user concerns on long standing/fixable issues
I don’t complain just to complain. My concerns are reasonable and I won’t be going away.
But thanks for defending the Roon wall at the expense of common sense
It’s a bit unfair to ask from a consumer, but provide evidence that your claims are correct, at DAC output (which is the only place that matters, you don’t listen to USB electrical graphs), and I’d bet that RoonLabs will be happy to get it done. You could also ask whoever’s selling you the memory-playback software to back their own claims up, in a way that’s independently verifiable (and not “just listen”) and share that.
Of course that only applies to your Innuos Zenith MKII. People that use other devices like the sMS-200ultra or ultraRendu or most any other endpoint device can’t do what you are doing with SqeezeLite. Why? Because those devices don’t have enough memory nor are they user configurable at the OS level.
You are doing something that is unsupported and a little flakey based on what I have read. Yet you want Roon to implement this when it breaks their UI hurting the user experience.
All you guys in that thread over on CA have gone crazy with external clocks, low latency OSes, and now tracks loaded into memory.
I just know what is possible and a Roon implementation of playback via memory would be tremendous.
It is only flaky using the using the experimental Roon/Squeezelite option with the Innuos. The Squeezelite/iPeng option is rock solid (although you don’t have the superior UI of Roon).
Hoping Innuos continues to tweak this until the Roon/Squeezelite option is solid
Hello - these were listed above. I don’t have a major problem with the UI changes. My long standing issues are:
1 Want the ability to toggle between Roon or my meta tag data for track ratings
2 The absence of the above makes me have to tag all my 5 stars as favorites in Roon which is a very time consuming task and the Favorite heart is very buggy (Roon is aware)
3 I would like playback in memory to improve Roon’s sound quality. See this discussion:
More to the point, what this argument suggests that this particular device is poorly designed for streaming if it sounds better playing from its internal memory. There’s no technical reason why digital playback from internal memory would be sonically better than streaming playback with a properly designed digital device. Which is of course not what Innuos propaganda would have us think
This makes no sense at all. On any planet. In any universe.
Innuos makes an outstanding product. Try listening to one. They are pushing the envelope to extract everything they can out of their product, control software and interfaces with software like Roon.
Or try perusing the CA forums to see all the people who espouse playback from memory and are executing it in a myriad of ways
You believe what you want to believe. I’ve worked very successfully in science and engineering for decades, and I can make these judgments from understanding the relevant technical foundations.
How is the Innuos an outstanding product if, by their own admission, they cannot keep a small amount of intermittent SSD activity from affecting the sound quality of a DAC? That surely is not an outstanding product, especially for 4 or 5 grand, and they need to look to their engineering.
And as far as the claims on the CA forums are concerned, well just about everything gets claimed on the CA forums. NOS DACS, FPGA DACS, this speaker cable, that USB lead, CAT8 cable with extra earths … so these claims have very little weight.
JRiver are on record as saying they don’t believe there are any sound quality improvements to be gained from loading the entire track to memory. They added the feature to appease audiophiles who used to request it on a regular basis.
I am hoping the same for my Roon and ZENith MK3. SqueezeLite via Roon is superior to just RAAT for me. SQ wise. And I hate to admit it, but it’s true. It drives me crazy. I wish you guys can come over and hear it for yourself. But it’s experimental and very flaky, especially when skipping forward in an album or playlist or just quickly browsing stuff.
I’ve learned a lot over at CA and have certainly helped my system. Some really smart people over there challenging the norms. I didn’t realize the Roon forum was filled with so many closed minded, know everything’s. What a shame
Listening is believing with the Innuos which I bet the commenters here have not done.
Roon’s RAAT protocol guarantees a bit-perfect delivery of the data to the Roon endpoint.
If your own endpoint does not sound good with Roon, then it’s your endpoint that is lacking, rather than Roon’s protocol.
Change it. Simples. Personally, I can recommend Lumin network audio players. They’re great
Believe, then verify. Or risk leaving your wife and castle to ride towards Jerusalem on horseback, and probably ending up either decapitated or killed by a food-borne disease on the way.
Unfortunately the power of the Internet, social media, and the herd mentality. There are only a few noisy characters that post everywhere full time, while the silent majority is well… silent, for fear of being ridiculed.
Needless to say, none of these folks try it for themselves, they simply know, because they read it in the Internets. And even if they did try, they will likely hear no difference with their cheap Chinese Topping DACs, and their Chromecast Audio (Yes… I know … Amir and Archimago measured them and there was nothing wrong with them )
I am big Roon fan. I have lifetime subscription. But to say Roon is perfect (keep waving the bitperfect word), and not request any improvements or at least some investigation and exploration, does not protect Roon, it damages it. Keeping up with competition is very important. It’s only stepping out of Roon forums and you see a large group of people saying Roon SQ is subpar. I keep defending Roon in those forums, but it is becoming more and more difficult to do so
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