Don't connect a DAC directly to Core?

To avoid noise you shouldn’t have any loudspeakers in or near your listening room. I have found out first hand that they are the main sources of noise, it really distracts me of looking at my beautiful equipment. :upside_down_face:

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  1. Never have plants in your listening room the leaves build up harmful nano air currents that destroy the speaker imaging
    Showing (off) your Roon setup - description and photos
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I think the caveat is there are things that matter to some. They are not hard fast rules, nor should they be.
To address the matter that seems to be troubling the OP, the Nucleus is designed to sit with your gear if necessary. The small NUC board with mobile processor will have reduced emissions compared to a big multi core ATX or M-ATX based rig. The Nucleus is passively cooled and that cooling encases the electrically noisy board in a significant amount of none ferrous metal. The Nucleus is patched for native DSD connection of some DAC brands via USB. Using the Nucleus in this way should give you the most reliable experience. Keeping matters simple gives you the basis of a solid system and from there you can try different things if you want.

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Hans, I used to have a buzzing noise and when I connect my DAC directly to my Mac before I use Roon. Now, I don’t hear noise with Roon. not sure about sound quality differences between direct vs endpoint (ultraRendu). of course theoretically the isolation and separation should help to reduce the background noise and the endpoint with asynchronous protocol and better clocking (hopefully) should also reduce jitter. YMMV

I agree. Your system architecture and components seem fantastic and I bet your getting a heavenly sound.

Exactly. I mean, are you serious about this or not?

At some point I will post about my Synergistic Research “Room Toonin’ Christmas Cactus”. A remarkable piece of kit, as the Brits say. Mind you, $1500 is a lot of money to pay for a plant, but depending on how you orient it there are profound changes in sound signatures. While in bloom there are three weeks of sonic bliss.

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I think we might look at this more as a set of suggestions to improve quality if those things are available? Otherwise, I read this as:

  1. No matter what you think, your music doesn’t sound good, so
  2. Remove all information systems from your room and
  3. Take your kids’ college money or get a new job to buy an I2s DAC and
  4. Really you should move houses too!

:eyes:

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Dear friend, I can share my experience with you. If you do all the comparative tests with Tidal music, with a DAC that can’t unpack MQA files (after unpacking, an MQA file can become even 88 … 384 KHz / 24 bit, maybe even more, depending on how it was created), without you having a collection of very good quality files (not necessarily DSD, although at DSD you will feel the best differences, if you have a DAC capable of playing DSDs natively) stored LOCALLY, you should not to worry about this aspect.
I also tell you the reason: because the differences you will perceive will be related only to the tonal balance, somewhat. This will make you think that you have gained a certain density of sound, scene, or other aspects … But, when you will be able to run LOCAL files, of very good quality, you will find that all your efforts until then have It was a waste of time, because you will have to take it from the beginning and reconsider all the sound qualities.
And there is one more thing to keep in mind: if you start all the tests with very high quality LOCAL files and you manage to get the right sound, then i assure you that the system will sound good with worse files.
I hope I made myself understood and that my advice will be useful to you. I wish you all the best! Listen to music with your soul, not just with your ear. When music satisfies both your ear and your soul, it means that is the best sound for you. I wish you a lot of inspiration and sensitivity to succeed!

Thanks for all the replies. I suppose some were sarcastic (no plants in my living room? I practically live in a greenhouse, LOL). What can I say? My system sounds fantastic as it is and I can only compare to my Michell Turntable with either Benz Micro Glider L2 or Jan Allaerts refurbished Ortofon Venice cartridge. Maybe I’m too old to hear the subtle differences or the noise generated by my MacBook Air but I’m pretty sure my ProAc Response D100 would reveal them if there was any.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_mq_w4AX4Q/
https://www.instagram.com/p/9aqkTtAYI7/

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That was actually a dig at rick’s system with plants, when he has such a stringent list of “don’ts” :laughing:

EDIT: Beautiful place @Hans_Van_Rafelghem! That would be great to listen to music in.

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Hello! In everything I wrote, I did not refer to your audio system as a whole. I was referring to the aspects related to the tuning of the digital audio system, mainly. I like your record player. Good luck!

Based on what I you said, those people think they know how Roon / digital audio works, but they clearly don’t because nothing they say makes sense. Trust your own listening above all else. That’s all that really matters.

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People should use what they are comfortable with…what ever methods deliver the digital files to your analog ears the best they can…

I run my Roon Server on a MAC Mini that runs on 12VDC, sends the USB signal to a Audiobyte Hydra DDC (runs on 5VDC) that sends the AES digital files to my DAC all as quiet as a mouse! In fact my fan-less Mac Mini is in the same room…OH NO…

Hi Hans,

I totally agree with Tim, it depends mainly on the DAC.
And last but not least try only to your ears, the rest are only words and maybe additional costs.

Enjoy your music.

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Interesting.

I have a Chord 2Qute, and I think that it sounds nicer if I feed it bits from roon via ethernet to a Pro-Jec Streambox S2 instead of direct from the USB-out of an intel NUC running as a dedicated roon core.

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Wellllll, the argument is twofold. Made by Roon itself, by splitting the load, no on process can interfere with another (by stealing resources presumably). But unless you are doing DSP, its a non-issue.

Others claim a real, if small, benefit because the network provides galvanic isolation and therefore eliminates ground noise 9and maybe other HF noises). OK, possible.

I have not compared directly but i run my “b” system directly from ROCK to my DAC ( actually to a Schiit EITR, but consider it part of the DAC). I will admit that upstairs, in my main listening room, i get some additional benefits - even if i have the same speakers (and similar electronics). That is via a network run, and uses an old, revived MacBook Pro as a Roon endpoint/bridge.

Soooo, maybe.

Now apparently somebody told you

Also, they say that music directly from TIDAL sounds better than via ROON because of this. Unless you use an “endpoint” (whatever THAT might be).

Well, whether TIDAL sounds better or not, someone is confusing reasons. The misunderstanding is one reason i am so leery of what people espouse. TIDAL does not eliminate Roon core or the USB gorund noise that might or might not be part of it. TIDAL streams to your Core. A FLAC file streams to your core. They are both streams. Nothing electrical changes. That myth is busted.

An endpoint is whatever receives the Roon stream over the network. So i stream from my ROCK core over my cat6 network to my Macbook Pro running roon – which is the “endpoint” and acts as both a client of Roon and a network bridge (Ethernet to USB), effectively.
And I’m also an EE, and have designed a number of high end electronics that have been commercially produced. No DACs, yet. I will absolutely isolate its USB and if it has one, RJ-45 jack.

So - not BS but also not exactly priority 1 IMNSHO.

G

Oh, good point (he who spoke of running the mac on 12V - presumably a battery). I always preferred the sound when i pulled the plug on the Macbook Pro (B4 Roon) and ran it on batteries. That was likely a subtle ground loop.

This may be the single best post I’ve ever seen on a hifi forum!

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Just_Me,

I actually use an HD PLEX LPS…it has multiple output rails from

https://hdplex.com/hdplex-fanless-300w-linear-power-supply-for-pc-audio-and-ce-device.html

3.3 to19 Volts DC …runs a little warm but has been 100% reliable

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