What exactly are you on about now that needs enlightenment. Seems to me you’re off on your own tangent convinced you’re making a point, only you’re not even close.
Never mind. Have a nice day
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A Lumin A1 is a fully-fledged, Roon-Ready network player, not just a bridge and/or DAC. The A1 accepts DSD64, and sounds sublime.
A Chromecast Audio has it’s use(s), but tops-out at 48khz without stuttering/gaps, and you need to feed the optical output to a suitable DAC, unless you use it’s internal DAC.
And your point was, exactly…?
Do you follow this process when ever you buy a hi-fi component?
It depends, doesn’t it?
I can justify a (hi-fi) purchase whichever way I please, as I am not making any claims, let alone imaginative but brazenly unscientific ones. I can buy an amp or some speakers for any of their features, power, size, colour or brand name. It’s a choice. I don’t have to follow a process.
That said, I do follow a process if I need to. Case in point - I have changed amps based on the observation that I was hearing loose bass control in some tracks. I took measurements using a special microphone and software and identified a significant bump in a part of the low frequency range. I corrected for this in software using Roon’s parametric equaliser, measured (and heard) an improvement. Based on this and the technical parameters of the amp and speakers, I formulated the hypothesis that the amp lacks power to properly control the rather large 4 bass woofers in the speakers. Upon getting an amplifier with significantly increased power I have repeated the measurements and noticed that the bump was all but gone, and tracks which displayed the issue sounded correct, i.e. without the unwanted and delayed bass emphasis, and without the need for software correction.
Does that answer your question?
If I’m reading it correctly … you will use non scientific methods when choosing hi-fi components for yourself but you wouldn’t make a claim about them to anyone else such as saying they actually make the system sound better,. But you will use scientific techniques to solve scientifically identifiable issues.
Everything else is just hearing
It does answer my question. Thanks
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Please stop talking about one another. No one comes here to find out what you think about each other. Keep the discussion on topic.
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I just happened to see this exchange where you claim my comment was personal because I wrote that someone’s idea had gone to an absurd extreme. And you claimed I was making it about ‘him’. That is ABSURD. If I question someone’s idea I am NOT making it personal.
The best way to choose a piece of hi fi gear is to know how well it is manufactured, the reputation of the company making it, how long they have been in business and then to listen to it. While reading specifications can be useful, specifications will not tell you how a piece of audio gear will sound. No one I know who manufactures audio gear thinks the specifications tell you how something sounds. The late, great Siegfried Linkwitz told me that the eyes are for looking and that the ears are for listening and that looking at speaker measurements and making assumptions about how the speaker will sound, is foolish.
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The OP asked for RAM playback and this quote was the last being on topic.
We are about 1 and a half year later with new updates of Roon.
Did something change in behalf of this?
As an Innuos zen mk3 owner I was shocked when I recently learned that when using Roon (and that’s what I do) I don’t get RAM cached playback.
This was a strong selling point of that music server, obviously only in UPNP mode…? Not a single reviewer, literally no one did point at this before except Forums I did not use. Maybe the difference won‘t be audible, but that‘s another story.
It is conceivable that the difference will be audible to many. But the differences aren’t just about loading tracks into RAM. It is about how the playback software is designed to work and what any drawbacks might be. Some are offering this sort of functionality on their players but with ‘experimental mode’ labels or ‘may cause instability’ type warnings. Roon are not the sort of company that does that. And if they did I think they’d get a lot more complaints than they do by omitting RAM playback.
Although Roon does not load complete tracks into RAM, I get +1min music when playing from Qobuz and pulling out the network cable from my streamer. (and I play everything via HQPlayer in DSD256 format.)
I think there’s (quite some) RAM memory involved.
Dirk
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Each streamer has its own level of memory buffer to some extent mainly to allow continuous playback when network inconsistencies are an issue. I know Naim increased theirs for the current generation of kit, previously they had many issues with Tidal playback as it was retrofitted into an architecture not really built for internet streaming. It’s not a minute only seems to last about 10-20 secs before Roon stops. Might be more when using UPnP though.
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That’s true. From what I also heard, it seems that with iPeng the RAM playback only works with files stored in the HD. In any case, I really encourage to use the experimental mode with Roon. Using the sequezelite sound engine gives me a noticeable SQ upgrade. Cheers.
Is there relation to this topic and “processing speed”? If processing speed is “10X”… then a 10 minute song would be processed in 1 minute and then processor is idle… so for the remaining 9 minutes of the song, it should effectively be zero no? Or is processing speed just “if were were to pre-process” to give an idea on how much processing power is being used?
Processing Speed
DSP FAQ:
Note that Roon currently runs the DSP engine on one CPU core per zone–so this reflects the load relative to consuming a full core. “2.0x” means you’re using 50% of one CPU core to play music in this zone.
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I don’t think your reply has anything to do with what I was asking.
Actually, it does…
In my experience “playback from memory” is interesting, but not much more than that, had it tested on JRiver with very little, if placebo, effect… having said that, other option JRiver has is “play decoded from memory”, and THAT truly makes a difference… I would say the same difference makes playing from WAV instead of playing it from FLAC… I mean, 1process in one case, 2 processes in the other, timing makes the difference if the audio system is sharp enough to expose it… so, playing “DECODED from RAM” is really a feature I would love to be able to switch on at will… do not take my word for this, go ahead, try it… rip a good recording (a small strings chamber ensemble is great for the test)… rip it in FLAC, then rip it in WAV, same CD player, same computer, all “ceteris paribus” as it should be… compare both versions in a fine tunned system and you will be surprised… and about entire playlists needing to be preloaded, I do not understand why that is even necessary… in JRiver the player preloads a single song at the time, takes a couple of seconds… ah, you want to play gapless, well, every listener should make his choice, “DFR” or “gapless” a toggle would suffice for that…want to play many rooms at the time and loading many programs at the same time in memory may prove to be inconvenient, same solution… a toggle… (keep in mind many people uses Roon in a single system and in a single listening room, just because of its quality and features)… you see, I understand Roon is the best music player in the world, but JRiver, playing decoded form RAM was almost as good… I wonder what the best player could achieve in terms of sound quality if it wouldn’t give away this feature just because… and of course, set as an option, toggle in, toggle out, as you wish…
That is very interesting! And I experience the difference between FLAC and WAV too.
@brian Is this something ROON could offer as well?