Is there any sound quality improvement with the new Roon 1.8? What are the improvements, if any?

I believe no such thing. While I believe they sound better, to my ears at least, I check out updates to the filters I use regularly. I don’t bother checking for improved bit-perfect transports…

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I trust that Roon’s implementation of DSP and volume control, given that both are performed on a 64 bit upsampled signal, are accurate. I don’t have the knowledge to comment in any greater detail, but from what I’ve read (and understood) this provides sufficient precision such that there are no negative consequences in terms of sound quality. Basically, the implementation is maths - here’s a signal, here’s a sufficiently sophisticated algorithm to manipulate it. Whether it sounds better or not depends on the settings I, or anyone else, choose to use, but I’m confident that the implementation is sound.

EDIT: if you meant convolution filters, rather than DSP more generally, then no, the one I use isn’t perfect, I’m happy that Roon can implement the filter without error, but the filter itself isn’t one that I’m 100% happy with. But that’s got nothing to do with Roon.

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I rest my case - won’t comment further, since @Samuel_Hau does not seem to be getting the point.

NO ONE here is saying sound cannot be edited/“improved”/equalized/whatever by Roon or other solutions…ALL we have been saying, from the very beggining, is that asking a bit-perfect solution such as Roon to “improve” SQ does not make sense, since SQ is intrinsically subjective and CANNOT be improved in so far as bit perfection is what such a software solution strives for.

Again: do you want to change the music file beforehand or afterwards, be it in analog or digital terms? Be my guest.

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Xeon processors implement better bit validation on the internal bus for enhanced reliability. This is needed in servers where reliability is needed to reduce server crashes.
If the Taiko guy is using Asus motherboard dual Xeon CPU running windows at the end, this is just a PC. Those decorated PSU will not help as the noise comes from the processors.

Best Roon implementation is a Roon core outside the room on any old PC or laptop with SSD and a good Roon end point/streamer.

Actually, there are already apps on both iOS and Android than can “test” your hearing and create an audiogram that can then be used for auto eq. Mimi is the the one I use on my iPhone, it’s not perfect of course, but it’s better than nothing in my opinion, and If I remember correctly, Samsung has one built-in.

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The effect of buffer sizes on SQ is something I’ve noticed too. But when I asked about this, there was no response.

There are improvements to be had but I don’t think it will ever be a focus or spoken about officially.

So true! It’s much easier to tout the changes of visuals and improvements to navigation, and other such things that no one even asks whether there is a difference!

Just be careful, even their solid state stuff can get overly hot and has burned more than a few people

I am not a pro photographer but according to a person who makes their living that way, I have talent. Perhaps they are full of BS because I am rather astonished by the claim that a RAW file is essentially crap until ‘dealt with’ via a program.

Or did I misunderstand the comment?

A raw image file is essentially the unprocessed sensor data. If you view the file as raw instead of the jpeg thumbnail that is often available, it does indeed look terrible to our eyes. The data needs to be “interpreted” before it looks right to the human eye. That is what the software in the camera does when you save in jpeg instead of raw. Software on our computers tends to be much more sophisticated and powerful and will, with the right person at the controls, do a much job interpreting the raw data than the camera.

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Hi, as a photographer, let me try to explain a RAW file. When the camera captures an image, light is passed through the lens to a sensor. The sensor uses a Bayer filter array to convert light which is an analogue medium into a digital medium - individual red, green and blue coloured dots with luminance information. It’s an A/D (analog to digital converter). This is a RAW file. The RAW file is a proprietary format which needs to be processed and converted to a viewable image (.JPG) The processing involves selecting colour calibration profile, choosing white, black and grey points, tone curve sharpening etc.

Think of it like film - once you press the shutter, the light image is captured on the silver halide grains on the film. You don’t have a picture, you have a serious of dots with colour and luminance information. You have to develop the film in a darkroom to produce a negative in the case of print film, or a transparency in the case of slide film. If you want to print from a negative, there’s a whole load of further developing and adjustment (dodging, burning etc.) using an enlarger to make a print.

You can set the camera to JPG mode and let it make all the decisions based on the menu settings to give you an image, just like you can take your film to a lab for processing. Or you can shoot in RAW and make all the adjustments yourself, a bit like taking the film into your own darkroom for developing and printing.

It’s like buying a cake, versus buying the ingredients to bake your own.

EDIT: I must learn to type faster…

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image

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Does the fact that I recognise a DNG being processed in ACR make me a geek…?

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Nah, but naming the software I’m using in that first screenshot would out you as a nerd :stuck_out_tongue:

[:nerd_face:]RawDigger[/:nerd_face:]

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As an interesting aside - as we’re already about as far off-topic as we can get without sharing pictures or cats - I always thought it was interesting that digital cameras, at the point of capture, are analogue devices whereas film is essentially digital. Digital sensors measure the strength of an electrical signal at each photosite on the sensor (analogue) whereas the silver halide crystals in a film will have either been hit by sufficient photons to activate, or not - there’s no intermediate state.

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I run Roon on an Innuos Zen server. It sound good, but when I run it via Squeezbox with “play from RAM” implemented. It sounds better. There is no way to measure anything, it just sound better to me. End of. You can believe what you want.
Spoke to a lot of Innuos owners that run Roon and they have the same experience. So yes bit perfect sound can be improved by software and how it uses the hardware.

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In audio, most people want the file they receive to be unaltered from the original. They prefer to do their own alterations, if any, to their own liking.

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I think the OP may be saying something like “will there be new DSP options in 1.8”. Ie “new ways that I can experiment with improving the sound that I hear using Roon”. This strikes me as different from the group of folks who say “my dac receives the same bit perfect stream from two sources and I like one better than the other”.

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That possibility has been entertained, though they have not confirmed their intention. And it has been granted on several occasions that more or different options could be added but, no one knows what they might be and it would only allow for subjective improvements.

The flaw in your ongoing photography analogy is that people do get upset if their device changes an image. People who are serious about photography calibrate their monitors to get closer to the original file as supplied by the photographer.

The magic photo filters you mention only apply to the mastering side of photography/music, not delivery of the final product.