Core machine is iMac Mini, everything is connected via Ethernet. Sound device is CXN v2 (all defaults settings in Roon).
When I play the same song directly on my CXN v2 through DLNA sound is more crisp and live versus playing on the same CXN but via ROON.
For the test I switched off all filters in signal path.
I am on trial now and have big concern - why i would need to pay extra money for worse quality. However I like the way ROON organises my music collection and if the issue gets resoled i will be happy to subscribe to the service
Iâm afraid I donât have an answer for you, but I also find that Room SQ is not as good as when I play over UPnP or use Logitech Media Server on my Innuos Zen.
Although there is an âexperimentalâ mode on the Zen that to my understanding stores the audio file in its RAM before sending it to the DAC and that seems to sound better or very close to using UPnP.
I do not actually need room equalisation, i just like the way ROON organises my music collection. But worse sound quality really concerns me. It looks like ROONâs lossless is not as lossless as roonlab claims. Even with all DSP off.
Another view. Absolutely no difference in sound quality played through Roon (core on NUC with Roon Rock) vs LMS (on rPi4B running LMS) vs foobar2000 (on windows 10 machine), all three playing to same DAC and system.
No, DLNA does not do any transcoding and it sound identical to the same song played from USB drive plugged in CXN.
Both sources are volume levelled i.e. there is no perceptual difference in loudness.
I did the blind test with my friends and they 100% voted for direct play from DLNA (or like i mentioned from USB storage)
I would be great to hear from ROON support because I can see one lossy thing in the Signal Path - rate conversion from 192 to 384. Where did is come from? Like I said all ROON DSP is turned off.
Roon transcodes as well on the core side before sending on this the dac. If sending flac via UPnP dependant on the server it will either send native and the conversion takes place on the CXN or the server can transcode to wav which still needs converting but is less of a task than flac. I wonder if this is often the reason for the difference.
There is your answer. Many prefer local usb playback over network playback. Roon is over network which does bring other steps in to the equation. Plugging the drive in locally there is less to get in the way and no network overheads. How is you network setup when using Roon as this might be a resulting factor.
What your seeing there is your CXN upsampling, it does that for everything as part of the course itâs how all Cambridge streamers work. Roon is telling you this what the CXN is doing nothing to do with Roon.
DLNA sends FLAC to DAC untouched. Anyways - I already mentioned, USB storage obviously cannot do any transcoding and sounds great versus ROON.
My consumer point of view is that I can agree to pay money for convenient music organiser as long as it does not compromise sound quality. It is pointless otherwise.
No it doesnât, no DAC can play flac. They only take PCM. It all gets converted to pcm before going to a DAC. Thatâs how it works on everything. Perhaps read up on how digital audio works.
ROON claims âlosslessâ transformation which means I should expect the same output. But it is not true in my case. I know that CXN upsamples internally but it would do it for any input be it USB source or network stream.
Well, from previous answers I understand that ROON is not for me. Itâs a pity really because I like how it integrates in my system
I do not see it in your screen shots. Do you have enabled âexclusive modeâ, I think under advanced settings?
BTW: Roon sends bit perfect to the DAC. One of my DACs has a feature to recognise bit test patterns. I can send these patterns through the whole chain and it confirms perfect reception.
Even though you have set âSample Rate Conversionâ to disabled, it is in effect because your first screen shot shows â192kHz to 384kHzâ. (I know itâs confusing, I was bitten by this too â Roon, you may want to force this switch to âEnabledâ and gray it out so user canât change it.)
Iâve been experimenting with the 4 âSample Rate Conversionâ settings. They definitely change the sound!
Sorry but enabling rate conversion just adds one more in the signal path. I think in case of CXN - ROON tries to display the fact that CXN converts rates by default. However they are totally wrong here because CXN wonât convert if you use digital output. So ROON has outsmarted themselves.
Thanks all for trying to help. Unfortunately we are not any closer to the answer. To be honest I thought this is the way to contact ROON support but now I see that I need to create an official support ticket.