Ah but you do by using HouseCurve: Room correction using your iPhone and HouseCurve
If you have an iPhone (or can borrow one to set up HouseCurve) and would like try using dirac with Roon then HouseCurve is a nice, inexpensive way see if dirac will work on your system. Then if you like the results you can always invest in a more robust digital room correction setup. HouseCurve is easy to use and not a big investment and the results are totally reversible since HouseCurve basically generates a specific convolution filter for your room.
That’s not surprising since Dan Clark tunes all his headphones using the Harmon Curve. The Stealth almost exactly matches the Harmon Curve.
in that case you are really wasting lots of potential.
I could think of plenty of CDs with a Dynamic range of 12 (example) from 20-30 years ago that got so often remastered and compressed for bad headphones, smartphone loudspeakers , sounders and such that they have a dynamic range of 5-6 currently.
The FiiO rep on Head-Fi responded to a question I asked about the volume knob on the R7. According to him, it’s a pure digital knob and will work fine with Roon. Given that it’s the only physical volume-control option, that’s a good thing.
I had everything set up to do an in depth comparison of the Fiio M11Plus with my much loved Oppo HA-1 desktop DAC/headphone amp and then I started to listen and listen very carefully at that.
Well it turns out that the sonic differences between the devices, if they exist at all, are very, very subtle and, for the most part, rather insignificant. With that being said I’m just going to jump on the bandwagon along with several other posters in this thread and say that for anyone looking for a headphone amp to use as part of Roon powered headphone station need look no further than the M11 Plus. You can start using this little wonder of an audio device with any headphone or IEM you already own and then be confident that you will be able add better headphones or IEMs without also needing to upgrade your headphone amp.
For just under $700 one gets a fully capable Roon Ready endpoint, a portable Android powered music player capable of playing from just about any music streaming service, as well as locally stored files (from either the internal memory or a microSD card (up to 2TB), with a world class internal DAC and a first rate headphone amp!
I will therefore leave it up to the professional audio reviewers to do all the careful listening that would be required to suss out all minor niggles that they are sure to have with this wonderful device. From this point on I’m just going to enjoy lots of great sounding music on the M11 Plus and will no longer be sweating the details - always the sign of a great audio device!
The FiiO rep on Head-Fi confirmed that the FiiO Roon app works the same way on the R7 that it does on the DAPs - you have to manually launch it in order for the device to become a Roon Ready zone. I made the feature request we’ve discussed here which is to add a feature to launch it at boot.
There’s an R7 thread over there in case anyone wants to follow along.
So, I would have the Quick Settings having the Roon Ready app on the first screen near the top for quick access to ensure that it is always enabled. Because the device will be plugged into a power source, it would be less of a concern to have it always running in the background, since it’s not a battery drain, like it would be on the M11 Plus and other DAPs. This makes it a true Roon Ready always on device.
The ARC app runs fine but it doesn’t play bit perfect. In practice, this means that all content is upsampled (or downsampled) to the built-in DACs default frequency or to the frequency that content was played at prior to launching ARC. As you move through tracks, the frequency will remain constant and will not adjust to the native frequency of the content you are playing. Hope that explains it.
This is correct. As long as you manually launch the FiiO Roon app after booting, you should be ok. If you have a power outage, you just need to re-launch that app. This is different than many Roon Ready zones that are always in a playable state but that may not be an issue for your use case. At worst, it’s like to be nothing more than an inconvenience.
There was some connection issues with a previous version of ARC for some users including me, but Roon seemed to have sorted that out. It was an Android issue in general I believe. Been fine since then. Like all Android devices bit perfect on ARC is only currently via USB dacs so it does not recognise the internal DAC. This is being looked at by Roon for some future update.
I’ve been thinking about the R7 as a desktop streamer and headphone amp. I’ve been wondering about the experience of entering passwords and doing other on-screen related keyboard tasks. It seems like it would be pretty awkward to tap stuff out on the tiny Android keyboard at the bottom of the screen.
It occurred to me that my desktop keyboard is a bluetooth keyboard that supports multiple connections and one-key switching. Sure enough, it paired easily with my M11Plus and, once paired, it works great as a keyboard and volume controller. My keyboard has a play/pause button (which works) but no transport keys.
For me, at least, this is interesting - I’m a keyboarder like many other folks. The idea that I could have the R7 on my desk and flip easily to keyboard control is pretty compelling.
I’m thinking about putting together a Qobuz playlist called “Music We Love to Listen To On The Fiio M11 Plus” and would like to get as many contributions as possible. So if you don’t mind helping me out by posting some of your favorite tracks, artists and albums I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Here’s one to get things started:
Rebekka Bakken - Little Drop of Poison: Songs By Tom Waits
This is tough because my tastes run wide and don’t necessarily have a lot of overlap with other people’s preferences (though I know from other threads here that I have some tastes in common with other folks on this thread).
I’ll add one. I’m choosing this one because it’s one of the tracks I used to compare the M11Plus to the Uniti Atom HE. It is, of course, a great track. It sounded so good on the M11Plus that I gave up on the comparison effort and just listened to the entire album on the FiiO.
Like gTunes I have eclectic tastes so not sure all would go down well, although we do overlap and I do with@killdozer. For me no playlist would be complete now without one of my favourite tracks on one my favourite album of the last few years. Gorgeous sounding.
