Hi dave
This issue has already been discussed in several forums. However, I always had the impression that it is not so important to most people. Either because they put the advantages of Roon above the sound quality, because they don’t hear a difference in sound, or because it is so small that the advantages of Roon outweigh the disadvantages.
Rockna Wavedream IV, Innuos ZEN MK3, ATC SCM25, PS Audio Power Plant.
The difference between UPNP and Roon is really serious and frightening in this chain.
Try it out yourself.
Best regards
Christian
Likely very DAC dependant, sounds to me like the Innuos is too noisy over USB with Roon, it is more CPU intensive than LMS. Some DACs are better at rejescting this noise than others. Roon always says to use a separate networked endpoint for best results. But if I spend that much on an Innuos I would expect better performance from USB. Who is at fault here is hard to judge as Roon on my system sounds as good as UPnP and better for streaming services.
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Thanks for the reply Chris. Was it much hassle loading up the Roon core software, switching to Roon and then switching back to Upnp if my results are similar to yours? Am using a Chord DAVE as the DAC in this instance Also I wonder if the experience is the same if you put the Roon core elsewhere and have the Zenith as a Roon player?
All the software is preloaded Dave. It takes seconds to enable Roon (it’lltake a while to catalogue the library though). It takes seconds to switch over to LMS.
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Yes, it’s very easy, max. 2 minutes.
The Zenith as a Roon player? Have no experience and have to say that this make no sense to me, because the Zenith is much to expensive only to use it as a Roonplayer, but try it 
I have a Zenith mk3 and have been using the 1.4.4 Innuos update with the Experimental Squeezelite mode. This is stable about 99% of the time but can still have skips and dropouts, both in Tidal streaming and SSD playback. So far it’s always occurred at the start of a new album, and the simplest solution is to stop and start over again, or close the player and restart.
On sound quality, the new experimental Squeezelite under Roon is dramatically improved over Roon alone (as both core and player). I find that the original Sqlite under Ipeng can sound a bit better than the experimental mode if the source is played from the internal SSD. Transients are better defined, meaning a lower noise floor. However, streamed data from Tidal actually sounds better with the Experimental mode than with IPeng. The only reason I can imagine for that is that the IPeng/Sqlite player has hardwired an extremely old version of Tidal (v. 1.2) that is never updated by Innuos, whereas Roon always uses the latest Tidal version ( ~ 2.14). Tidal may have made changes in their code over the couple of years between these versions that affects sound.
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I am assuming Roon Player means the Zenith is effectively a Roon endpoint? I was only wondering that as I have an ELAC Discovery which is a Roon Essentials Core/Player. While it wont see another Roon core it should be able to see another Roon endpoint which would mean it should see the Zenith. I am thinking this would mean I could use Roon to run the Zenith would having to buy another licence (or install another Core)? Also as the music is effectively going from the Zenith to the USB connected DAC then I lose none of the quality? Waiting on ELAC to update Essentials to Roon v1.6 for fix a Tidal authentication problem before giving it a try. but let me know if I am not understanding any of that correctly.
Hello Dave, your Roon license contains only one core. I don’t know exactly how a network with 2 Roon Core will react, but I guess you should deactivate the ELAC Core.
I don’t understand why you use the ELAC Roon Core when you have an very expensiv and High End Innuos Zenith (Roon Core) ?
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Roon essentials comes free with some Elac products so no license. He would have pay for another to use it on the Innuos. I doubt that it will talk to other zones though that are not Elac products being free.
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Spot on. Innuos recommended that I connect the ELAC to the Zenith ethernet streamer port. That did leave me wondering if the ELAC to DAC would sound as good as the Zenith USB to DAC so will try that out . I guess I could leave the Zenith running Logitech and the ELAC running Roon and compare UPNP vs ROON through the same DAC .ELAC has just updated to a version of Roon v1.7 with some features disabled for commercial/technical reasons…not sure which exactly but no DSP is the most obvious
CrystalGipsy got that right.
Hi All, first post here. Good to connect to you all. I have a Zenith Mk3, OS1.4.4. Using the Roon/Squeezlite Player (Experimental Mode) into a Chord Qutest. The setup is a step forward in SQ, notably, soundstage, and timbre. However, with the latest Roon v1.7, 571 build, I’m now experiencing significant issues with random playback errors, with tracks being skipped in the album lists. I wondered if others are experiencing this issue or I have a local issue? Appreciate guidance and how best to resolve. Thanks in advance.
Studio_44, I’m using the same configuration, just a different DAC. I found skips and errors when I initially switched to the new Experimental Mode with Innuos 1.4.4. It occurred briefly over two days but has been completely stable ever since. Try giving it a bit more time, I don’t know why this is the case.
Have the same problem. Already contacted Innous support. Will report back.
Many thanks Claudius, really appreciate any updates you have to resolve. Hope that this is sooner rather than later, kindest regards, Jonathan
Hi Robbi, thanks for getting back and sharing this. I’ve been trying to isolate what the issue is. As a Roon Core everything is stable for me. It’s just with Squeezelite, kindest regards, Jonathan
If your problems are specific to MQA streams from Tidal (or MQA from SSD), let me know. I can suggest a configuration issue.
One other thing, which probably isn’t your issue here. With unsolvable Roon problems, I’ve found they are often solved by deleting the present instance of Roon Remote and downloading a new copy.
The 1.4.4 did not really fix the SqueezeLite Roon experimental feature. It is still “experimental”. A little more stable than before but just a little
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Thanks for this, I’ll give this go 
Good to know the context, thanks.