I tried out Euphony today. It’s priced slightly lower than Roon but not much in it. It offers big promises but in my opinion comes up very short on all of them. It comes in at about 10.5 US Dollars a month compared to Roon at 12.99 for a yearly sub. It offers Tidal, Qobuz and some other stuff but now much over Roon. I just added Qobuz and my own files.
Well its own music software is terrible and so basic it makes Audirvana look next gen. It’s slow, looks horrible no info on the music at all and the accompanying phone-app is just as bad and not very responsive.
Their own software supports playing to other Euphony endpoints (you have to pay for these so price goes up past Roon adding just one more) or UPnP (if it works). UPnP implementation seems to be very flakey would not respond to commands such as pause all the time and no artwork shown at all on my Naim.
It does offer DSP so I could load in my convolution filters I use in Roon to directly compare sq. Does Euphony sound any better than Roon on ROCk. It’s the amazing sq that we are supposed to be paying for after all. Well not in my subjective tests it didn’t for Qobuz or local files sounded the same. Did putting the playback queue into Ram make any difference. Not that I could tell. Did choosing Ramroot which loads the whole os to Ram make any difference. No except it takes forever to boot in this mode. For the record It’s running on the exact same pc as Roon same music sources from local USB drive and to same endpoint my Naim Uniti Atom, only difference is it’s just booting from a usb stick for the trial so I didn’t have to loose my Rock install. Not that I believe this would change anything, perhaps speed up some performance things on the Ui?
Euphony does allow you install Roon server as well or Roon bridge if you wish but why would anyone sub to this and sub to Roon on top of it it makes zero sense to be paying so much for what is just an OS. The supposed sq benefits are just not there in my experience and offers the same quality as using Roon on ROCK.
Whilst Roon isn’t perfect compared to Euphony it’s way better value for money if you ask me . It’s far slicker and easier to use, offers far more in the way you can manage your library, sounds the same at least over the network it does, supports way more devices to play to, presents your content in just a far better way, it’s apps although not perfect are leagues ahead, it has DSP way better multiroom and doesn’t charge you extra for upsampling or Roon bridges.
Think Roon is expensive?Thing again when you look at something like Euphony.
It’s sad that there really isn’t anything to rival Roon in this space. PlexAmp is getting closer but still lacks proper Hifi integration support and only supports Tidal with no plans to add anything else.
Not interested in anything like jplay femto is a UPnP server and windows so a non starter, but it wouldn’t even run the demo on my laptop so instant fail.
I tried the new jplay iOS app which even tries to ape Roon in its layout but its execution is just dire and is just a glorified UPnP controller they want a sub for no thanks. Yet again it claims superior SQ sounded exactly the same as Asset and Roon.
As long as companies with wireless wifi enabled speakers, such as Kef, continue to offer their own control apps then Roon will always have potential new users waiting to discover just how much better Roon is than their woefully bad “native” apps.
Sure many of us on the Roon Community complain about Roon’s shortcomings but, as @CrystalGipsy clearly explains, the alternatives to Roon are just not ready for prime time nor are they in the same league as Roon.
The good thing about Roon is that due to public airing of Roon’s shortcomings here on the Roon Community, Team Roon works hard to bring useful improvements to Roon. And that’s worth paying for!
I am having a different experience with Euphony. It sounds so much better than all other players that I can’t deny it.
I have Euphony Stylus on a Windows audio computer. I dual boot into Euphony. I run Roon Rock on a hot rod NUC and I have an Atom N2800/JCAT XE USB running Euphony endpoint.
I have about 80k local files on a NAS and use Qobuz a lot as well.
Actually today I was thinking of getting rid of the Euphony Stylus because of the price and just keeping the Euphony endpoint. Euphony Stylus is so clunky I just don’t use it much. Plus the whole dual boot annoyance.
I usually run my Euphony endpoint by itself with the Roon Rock. I don’t like using Roon from inside of Euphony. I get most of the Euphony benefit but have the unbeatable Roon interface via RR. It sounds very good indeed!
I have a pretty high end system that is very revealing and I use open box speakers. I might be hearing things your system isn’t capable of.
So today I decided to fire up Euphony Stylus because I wanted to cancel my upcoming subscription payment. I didn’t know how to cancel without doing via the Stylus app. The problem is as soon as I had Euphony Stylus and Euphony Endpoint fired up and playing together the difference IS NOT SMALL! It sounds so much better you can’t unhear it. Everything just opens up top, bottom and the middle. The layering and ambiance is over the top. But damn that recurring charge when sometimes I only Euphony Stylus once or twice a month is not very good use of funds. Nothing in audio is…
I would have to spend many many thousands of dollars to get this sort of sound out of my system without using Euphony. I will probably at some point drop Euphony Stylus and continue using Roon/Euphony Endpoint. Euphony’s endpoint monthly payment is only like 8 bucks or so. Stylus is something like $18 here in the US.
My daily listening is via Roon/Euphony Endpoint and if I had never heard Stylus I would have been very happy. That being said, there is no unhearing or denying the advantage the Euphony Stylus offers me in SQ in my system.
Yea, this… there is no, can be no, and will never be a difference in sound quality between bit-perfect playback mediums. End of story. There are no flavours, nuances or tweaks to this reality
If you’re hearing something either you’re imagining it, or, one of the playback methods isn’t running transparently. You may have some EQ, volume levelling, cross feed, or otherwise engaged that is changing the output.
…And about the support: The other day euphony system told me, that there is not enough space on my OS disc (500GB, M2 type SSD) and that I should contact support. So I did, showing the system-message. The answer was: “Hello, just received the message attached. The OS is on the nvme type ssd . I don´t understand what´s wrong.” They ask ME what THEIR system wants to tell me.
It´s not the first quarrel of this kind.I´m really fed up and will not prolonge my contract in summer. After the leave of Zejlko things even went worse.
