Hello everyone. I’m Windows X, Fidelizer developer. After releasing Fidelizer 6.13, I received some questions about setting up Fidelizer to work with Roon + HQPlayer. It made me realized that I should increase the channel to support Roon users better.
To setup Roon with Fidelizer, please run Fidelizer software with optimization level of your choice, select “Launch audiophile player with Fidelizer optimizations” option, click Fidelize and select Roon software when Fidelizer prompts for “Music Player Application”.
If you use Roon with HQPlayer, the recommended solution is to set RoonServer running Roon on startup and set Fidelizer to launch HQPlayer after optimizations. You can also place Roon shortcut on Windows Startup folder if you prefer not to use RoonServer.
Feel free to ask If you have any questions related to Fidelizer and Roon that I can help you with. I’ll be checking this thread everyday and search through Roon community for further assistance.
Hi, all
From and architectural point of view i don’t understand why server audiophile optimization (HW/SW) would be needed on the Roon Core server machine when streaming “bit perfect” to a dedicated networked distant “Roonready” endpoint via RAAT protocol to feed the audio chain.
@hk6230 Thank you. I hope my post will help setting up Roon + HQPlayer with Fidelizer better.
@volpone In architecture’s point of view, all digital audio processes in ideal world where we expect to see logical outcome. For example, if timing of data arrival comes late, error correction will read and correct it to get the right data without side effects. We expect only 0 and 1 after all in this domain.
In real world where data works with physical hardware like D/A and A/D, they don’t process data as 0s and 1s but signal pulse to modulate with quantization. Since things work on real time processing level, physical chips has no control to process modulated data with 0ppm timing precision. We can see a lot of proposed solutions such as async transfer/reclocking/word clock sync/buffer/10M clock reference trying to solve these digital audio problems from different perspectives.
That’s why some audiophiles can hear difference among bit-perfect players. OS X audiophiles are good examples for demonstrating the difference between Amarra/Pure Music/Audirvana/Roon even though they’re all bit-perfect players.
For cases like streamers, it’d be even harder to explain since the data transportation is actually bits to bits. The best I can say is there’s difference between stroage media. Things like access time, power consumption, vibration can affect the timing precision of signal pulse modulation.
Some people say SSD and HDD give different sound. Some people demand memory playback feature to reduce issues with storage. Some compared between streaming and offline playback in Tidal’s Android software and still found offline performing better.
I agree with ncpl. We’re in situation where we have people believing bits are bits and people who can hear the difference on bit-perfect playback. I’ll try to help answering these questions with best of my abilities here and hope everyone can work things out to reach to the consensus together.
i have been using Fidelizer 6.13 + Roon + HQPlayer +AO + Process lasso on windows server 2012R2 and everything is working well. actually it is working better than i expected!
Some advice on how to set up Fidelizer with RoonServer:
At the moment I have installed the base package, not yet upgraded, but based on the feature list on the web site I expect I will.
I have a headless NUC set up to start itself and RoonServer on boot. If I install Fidelizer Pro, I understand it can remember my configuration and restart itself and Roon automatically on boot, correct?
I assume I need to remove RoonServer from the autostart?
And how do I pay? I have avoided PayPal but it seems to be the only way, so I set up an account. But when I click on Buy Now, I land on the general PayPal site. I can see no way of paying for Fidelizer Pro. (Yes, I have entered the fidelizer.key.)
That’s correct. Fidelizer Pro can set up RoonServer to run with Fidelizer Pro on startup. You may remove RoonServer from the autostart only if you select RoonServer as Fidelizer’s music player application.
Fidelizer has free version and it shouldn’t affect anyone’s wallet unless they’re happy with what Fidelizer offers for free. There’re a few good reasons why Fidelizer should improve audio performance on all kinds of machine. You can search about MMCSS for more information about it or you can simply try free version and see for yourself.
MMCSS is just about prioritizing audio which won’t make a difference on a machine that isn’t being worked. And as I said above, if you are pushing your machine Fidelizer might help.
It made absolutely zero difference the multiple times I tried it, my machine has gobs of power.
I have a few customers who use Fidelizer on very powerful machines using i7/Xeon CPU as a dedicated audio machine. Surely not everyone can notice the improvements with Fidelizer software but its principles will surely help audio performance whether one can perceive the difference or not.
I’d recommend you to keep running Fidelizer with default Workstation optimization level if that’s convenience with you. Maybe you’ll take a notice some days when you don’t run it.
First of all, thank you for sharing your feedback with us, @bevan_court. I’m glad to hear Fidelizer is working fine with Roon over there. Roon for Windows is very well done for audio output engine so it’s not surprising if someone prefer to stay with Roon’s engine. They’re from the maker of Sooloos, legendary music server that I once dreamed of after all. Sadly to say but I couldn’t afford Sooloos back in my freshmen days. that it’s more expensive that my annual income. I also had to save up for tuition fee too.
