After enjoying Roon for about two months I went back and revisited my experience listening to my Mac Mini with Pure Music embedded to it as the music player. It is among best in class. I recently turned a friend on to Roon and he observed IMMEDIATELY that the audio quality of Roon was not in the same league as his experience listening to his dedicated Sim Audio 740p preamp and his Sim Moon Mind. I believe he MAY sign up after trial for his Lyngdorf MP-60 bc in party mode it is immersive. But not for serious listening. I follow the PS AUDIO Community threads and many have made the move to Aurender as an alternative to computer music. I’ll do the same when budget permits as the experience is said to be even BETTER than my iTunes/PM experience. BUT , if developers can accomplish what I’ve suggested , I’d be with Roon FOR LIFE as the audio quality is for sure good enough As it stands now, Roon doesn’t present nearly as good soundstage and presence of sound, musicality as the true Hifi systems do. Thanks for listening 
The quality will be nothing to do with Roon I’m afraid, you may need to look else where.
I use Meridian DSP SE along with Bluesound pulse devices and a Meridian MS200/F80 with Roon using my local library and Tidal Hi Fi (MQA)
The sound quality is astonishing.
I have have had recording studio owners and musicians around whose jaws literally drop when they hear the quality, previously un aware this was available for home listening.
I remember playing an MQA to one musician and as he listened and the drums came in he cries out loud “Now THAT’s a snare drum”.
Just saying my experience
Thanks , though I respectfully disagree. And I’m sure your setup delivers excellent SQ. But can all these people be wrong? Check out the awards and accolades here on their home page. http://www.channld.com/puremusic/ So all Roon has to do, (I believe) is to recognize Pure Music as and endpoint. When I launch iTunes I actually launch Pure Music FIRST, and it automatically opens iTunes. iTunes knows where my library resides. And Roon of course sees it where it resides. So by supporting Pure Music, it should work by effectively setting off a chain reaction.
Sure, everybody is plastering their webpages with more-or-less childish accolades. Roon does, MQA does, Pure Music (never heard of ‚em before) does, Bluesound does, need I go on?
Its called marketing 
All I can suggest is that if you truly believe Pure Music is all a bunch of “marketing hype,” you imply that Stereophile and The Absolute Sound are baseless whose opinions are worthless. And I agree that Pure Music is relatively obscure. It is a “diamond in the rough. I guess we are all entitled to our opinions and, BTW I am not at all “bashing Roon. I’m trying to make a product I love better.
Here is a link to their home page. I think Roon should be able to recognize PM as an endpoint as it would them launch iTunes as it embeds itself to iTunes which would then would point to my library as a conduit to Roon. It should be easy enough to implement. See this.
I am involved in hosting live music in a small intimate venue and have that experience as a guide to what live music should and can sound like. So this is my reference, along with knowing many great musicians and sound engineers.
So, I take their word on audio quality over anonymous revues any day. Spending time with these people gives excellent insights into what they expect to hear. Sound checks are a great place to just listen and learn. The magic happens when it all snaps into place. Roon can deliver this quality as I’m sure other delivery systems can. Roon is certainly not an obstacle in the audio chain in my experience.
Fair enough and point taken. I wish somebody could provide a simple 1-2-3 guide within the Roon settings for those of us used to the Pure Music experience so that we could at least get close. I can ALWAYS reserve the option to occasionally listen to the Mac Mini stand alone without Roon, but would appreciate a simple guide to “ bridge the gap.” Thank you.!
Asking Roon to work with Pure Music is like asking Chevy to Install a Ford Engine for cryin out loud!!!
Simply ridiculous!
BTW, Chris, for what it is worth more than a few of my best friends have spent a lot of time in recording studios so I’m no stranger to them. These friends include the late (RIP) Doug Fieger and Don Was, perhaps the most successful producer in rock and roll today. We all go back to high school together. His partner David Was was best man at my wedding which Don also attended. Just an FYI, and again, your points are well taken. I am trying to work with subtle changes within Roon’s Settings menu to get it closer to where I’d like it to be. 
I can’t see them doing it as it is apple only. If you want to tweak the sound maybe hq player might do what you want and that does work with Roon.
Two points. 1). There are a TON of Mac users out there. Most high end audio stores for example use Macs as their default “computer” servers. Sure they sell music streamers but just ask Paul McGowan as head of PS Audio what he uses. It’s a Mac Mini with Audirvana. He hates Windows and always has. 2). Sorry but for me, the HQP seems awfully confusing and difficult For a non-engineer to master. If it was a simple download with a one time fee of $250 I’d be game for it. But based on what I’ve read, it’s complicated.
Psa have been on about doing their own octave music server for years now…it’s harder than you think.
I would rather use an appliance like rock with an os that’s dedicated to its purpose and nothing else.
Sure there are many platforms out there, just because macs are popular in audio stores doesn’t mean we should all be using them or that roon should favor them over other platforms
I too have friends in the recording and music industry and with studios that I support and know about their infrastructure too. I’ve been repairing audio gear for 45 years too. There is no secret sauce.
Everyone hears differently.
I feel sorry for people who perceive sound quality changes between different software. Must make music listening an arduous task.
Yes there are lots of people using Macs but what has that got to do with anything. There are lots of people using windows too and roon wouldn’t implement a windows only solution either.
I’m fairly convinced that Roon, without any DSP applied, doesn’t have “a sound”, but I also think that it sounds different through different streaming methods. Until recently, I used a Mac-Mini as the Roon core. I could stream direct from the Mac-Mini (via USB) to my DAC, but I also have a dCS Network Bridge as a Roon endpoint connected to the same DAC. They sounded different.
I recently replaced the Mac-Mini with a Roon Nucleus. Via USB to the DAC, this sounds better than the Mac-Mini, but the Network Bridge is still my preferred streamer.
I’m would be willing to bet that installing an Aurender as your streamer would give you a different sound. Better? Who knows?
I think you will find many people who would say that about any ad based review site.
I think you will say the same about internet discussion sites after reading them too!
All I can say is that according to several members on the PS Audio community forums they insist that by dumping their (MAC) computers and going to devices like Aurender (which has its own iPad interface the improvement is substantial. Their words, not mine.
Well, let’s look at what is going on here. You are using a general purpose computer running Roon to talk directly to a DAC. Is that over USB? Roon sounds best when you use the Roon Core --> Ethernet --> Roon Endpoint --> DAC setup. Why? Because general purpose computers are electrically noisy and directly connection to the DAC via USB passes along a bunch of that noise affecting sound quality.
I used to use iTune/Pure Music too and my plain Roon setup is better than that. When I use HQPlayer, it’s not even close. HQPlayer is quirky but not all that difficult to use. You just have to learn the interface.
This discussion is starting to occur about once every other week.
The solution to getting the best out of bit-perfect playback is to follow the Roon guidelines by separating your Core and Endpoint into two separate boxes and using RAAT over the network. If you want the absolute best in upsampling / DSP then you bounce through HQP which is already supported by Roon.
The fact that your Mac sounds terrible as the endpoint is not a Roon problem. Yes, plenty of software packages do a better job of optimizing the Mac for playback but Roon has never indicated they intend to “fix” the Mac; its a poor endpoint. The reference architecture is to use a Roon Ready dedicated endpoint that is optimized for that role within your Roon set-up.
In order to make the Mac sound better Roon would need a Mac optimized Bridge doing the same tricks that Pure Music, Audirvana, etc. do on the Mac to make it sound good. That’s not their goal. They want to keep the heavy CPU optimizations (like DSP) on the core and keep Bridge doing as little as possible.
Checkout the thread from last week helping this individual get better quality by adding a Raspberry Pi. Please investigate doing the same. Ok, Don't Flame Me. Settings to sound like Audirvana?