Recommended Bridge OS

[David_Snyder]

@ipeverywhere

Although these types of comparisons require extended listening

Yes. But just 20 minutes/day for a week will tell you all you need to know. Good for mental health too. Enjoy!

[spockfish (Harry ten Berge)]

@David_Snyder

It’s only real feature is that installation is even easier than RoPieee

RoPieee works out of the box for RoonBridge. There is nothing to configure.

[David_Snyder]

I recall spending more time than I wanted messing about with the RoPieee web UI to configure the DAC and other settings. Perhaps this was not necessary. I had to reboot after each change as well, but that was a while ago. Perhaps this is no longer required.

RoPieee has been great for the Roon community and meets a range of needs, while VitOS satisfies a very narrow use case extremely well.

[acbarn]

One really needs to do a blind A/B test to remove any expectation bias. I may do this at some point.

[Fernando_Pereira]

Having done a bunch of those with my wife, who does not care about the gear but has a keen ear, our conclusion so far is to stay away from USB audio. It is possible to get USB audio close to other connection methods with the right sources and DACs, but S/PDIF coax, AES, or I2S (when available) are more consistent in sound quality, possibly because USB audio requires greater complexity at both ends of the connection.

[Jim_F (Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)]

RPi4 running RoPieee or RoPieeeXL with USB out is excellent.

[David_Snyder]

@acbarn

One really needs to do a blind A/B test to remove any expectation bias. I may do this at some point.

That kind of test won’t be helpful here.

[acbarn]

It’s the only kind of test that can determine real differences not influenced by expectation bias. You know, that sciencey stuff.

[acbarn]

Harry,

I’d be curious to get your take on how/why VitOS might sound better than Ropieee. I don’t see any basis for that to be true, but would be interested in any insight you can provide.

Thanks,
Alan

[David_Snyder]

Human aural memory is insufficient for a test like this to be helpful in this case. Extended listening over a period of days while noting unconscious behavior tells the real story. Are you listening to albums start to finish or skipping around. How do you feel the day after your listening session?

[Paul_Jeno]

I just had my system switched back to RoPieeeXL, listened for quite some time and at the end of the day, I switched back to VitOS. I immediety noticed that my system sounded cleaner, less harsh and edgy than with RoPieee XL.

For today, I had to migrate Roon back to my Mac Mini 2018 due to problems with the switch to which my SonicTransporter is connected to. So my system is a bit different. Nevertheless, the effect was immedietly noticeable when I swapped the SD card holding VitOS.

Why different OS tend to sound different is beyond me. But the forums are full of discussions about which system is better: DietPi, Moode, etc. So people do hear differences, otherwise they wouldn’t be discussed this intensely.

I am pretty happy with VitOS, it‘s simple and lean.

[Michael_Harris]

Paul have you tried the basic Ropieee rather than RopieeXL, as the XL is a complete set of add-ons for Spotify, Airplay etc.
It might be worth the 15 minutes it takes to set it up and test it.
I am back on VitOS myself for the last several days and very happy with both options.

Mike

[Paul_Jeno]

Yes, some time ago, I had RoPieee installed, but I don’t remember it’s sonic signature. Will try it out tomorrow.

Regards, Paul

[Michael_Harris]

Paul based on your earlier observations it will be interesting to see what differences you hear. It is more lightweight than XL.

Mike

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

@David_Snyder

It has no support for a display, no Spotify Connect or UPnP/DLNA.

Just to be clear, neither does RoPieee.

@David_Snyder

installation is even easier than RoPieee and DietPi. Simply flash the boot image to a microSD card, pop the card in, and add Ethernet and power.

So far, that’s just like RoPieee…

@David_Snyder

Then, use the VitOS Manager app on your Andriod or iOS device to tell VitOS to install Roon Bridge.

Wait! I have to go to some app store and find some app from someplace and download it and install it and run it just to get Roon Bridge installed? RoPieee just does it, itself.

@David_Snyder

There’s no futzing about with a web interface, URLs, or chasing down IP addresses. There are no settings to change. No reboots. It all just works.

Again, same with RoPieee. Well, there are reboots, but all done automatically, no need for human intervention. Actually, given there’s this extra app to deal with (which no doubt is requiring permission to snoop your network), I think RoPieee wins the “easier” contest.

@David_Snyder

If you need the extra features, RoPieee is the right choice.

RoPieee has no extra features. It’s purely a Roon Bridge, except that you can use WiFi as well as Ethernet. And it runs on 3B Pis as well as 4. I guess those are features.

Oh, and it’s open-source. So you can see what’s being put into it.

@Paul_Jeno

Why different OS tend to sound different is beyond me.

I can’t comment on that, besides saying there’s no technical reason it should be the case. All the OS is doing is passing the bits along. Perhaps if you are using a DAC HAT that’s controlled by the OS, there might be some differences.

@Paul_Jeno

But the forums are full of discussions about which system is better: DietPi, Moode, etc. So people do hear differences, otherwise they wouldn’t be discussed this intensely.

Well, there’s another possibility, which is that people just like to talk, and in my experience they particularly like to talk about things they don’t understand.

[David_Snyder]

@Bill_Janssen

my experience they particularly like to talk about things they don’t understand.

…or share opinions about things they have never bothered to try…

[DaveN]

@Bill_Janssen

People just like to talk, and in my experience they particularly like to talk about things they don’t understand.

@David_Snyder

…or share opinions about things they have never bothered to try…

Every recent thread on (insert digital bit of kit here) should be prefaced by those two statements

[Fernando_Pereira]

@Bill_Janssen

I can’t comment on that, besides saying there’s no technical reason it should be the case. All the OS is doing is passing the bits along.

I’ll try to point out the middle ground in this perennial discussion, although I have little hope it will change the most extremely set views in this matter.

Since a DAC is a hybrid digital-analog device, we need to look at it from both perspectives.

Digital perspective: yes, with current devices working within spec, bits are just bits. That is, the bits sent by the digital source are going to be processed correctly as bits by the digital part of the DAC. This might not have been the case with some older PCs and DACs that had really dubious USB audio implementations.
Analog perspective: USB sources and DACs are electronic assemblies full of (electrically) highly non-linear circuitry. USB cables connect those together. Those non-linearities mean that even if electrical noise from the source is well above audible frequencies, it can alias back as low power noise in the audible range that can potentially contaminate the DAC’s analog output. It could also affect exact clocking in the digital switches that drive digital-to-analog conversion. Finally, the quantity and type of electrical noise from the source depends on what computing is going on in the source.

What has been missing in these discussions is a credible laboratory investigation of whether the factors in the analog perspective — which are real — reach the level of audibility. One difficulty is that typical audio measurements are good at showing whether a system is above the bar, but not at identifying smaller effects that many people can reliably pick out in blind A/B tests.

So, I can imagine that a leaner source OS could cause a small difference in sound if the source hardware and DAC suffer from design or implementation compromises that cause the analog factors above to reach audible level — physics and electronics do not preclude it — but I’d be a lot more comfortable with the discussion if there was quality technical data to confirm the hypothesis.

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

@Fernando_Pereira

So, I can imagine that a leaner source OS could cause a small difference in sound if the source hardware and DAC suffer from design or implementation compromises that cause the analog factors above to reach audible level — physics and electronics do not preclude it — but I’d be a lot more comfortable with the discussion if there was quality technical data to confirm the hypothesis.

Well, absolutely, but what seems unlikely is that (1) VitOS is actually “leaner” – they’re both running Linux, after all, and (2) that the difference between them could result in any appreciable contamination of even a badly designed DAC’s USB input.

Adding to my skepticism about these claims is that the measurements which do exist rather pointedly do not include RoPieee. (See the bottom of this page, if you dare – it has a bad certificate.) Given that it’s likely that a plurality, perhaps even a majority, of RPi 4 devices running Roon Bridge are running RoPieee, this is a strange omission. In my experience, manufacturers tend to omit relevant comparisons mainly when they show their product underperforming the competition.

Add to that, closed-source programs, mysterious “control apps”, and the unnamed “Silent Angel engineers”.

Finally, the misleading but no doubt completely innocent recollections on this page about ease of installation vis-a-vis RoPieee highlight the fallibility of personal experience, which only exists in our humanly wonky memories.

Life is a game of probabilities, and given everything I’ve read about it, I have to conclude that trying VitOS is probably not worth the time.

[Michael_Harris]

Bill I won’t argue with much of what you said, both Ropieee and RopieeeXL are both easy installs and I use both regularly.

Based on previous threads I read in these forums, the mystery app only came about because Roon stopped the company from distributing any Roon software for some hardware they had created as they did not have a license to distribute the Roon Bridge software (I assume any negotiations either did not happen or broke down.

There are various extensions to the Linux kernel for more real time capabilities, I am guessing that the Silent Angel engineers have been used.

In this current time it is also inexcusable to not have a valid certificate for any website, especially as it is now so automated.

Regards

Mike