I am not suggesting or saying anything has changed in your system at all. You say it hasn’t, I accept that.
But the fact remains you are hearing changes that others are not, so what is going on?
I don’t use any Roon DSP at all and nothing has changed for me, and probably most other people.
Based on that, what is causing the changes. Is it poor isolation from more core activity, if there is more core activity?
Is it changes in the Roon DSP engine, that I don’t use?
Is it psychological , expectation bias. (This is not a derogatory assertion) Placebo works in medicine. So why not in Hi Fi. Especially when a person is so focused. Also, this may not be the case.
I am curious to understand
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Roons sounded really flat this week :(. But I have a had a cold which always affects my hearing. Whats all this talk of Roon inverting phase in this update? Someone explain to me how this could happen?
Changes in Roon equals
A/ I’m deaf
B/ my system isn’t revealing enough
C/ you are already using DSP to compensate and can’t see that you are already altering the music and I’m an idiot for not doing the same so I notice a difference.
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I run straight off a fanless nuc running roon server and using Audiolinux as the os. I tried running a mac mini as an endpoint and didn’t get good results. I appreciate it is preeched as the best way to do it however in my extensive experimenting with the particular computer I’m using it wasn’t the case. Anyway I digress. I do use roon server on my endpoint and I upsample all files to dsd 256 predominantly streaming directly from Tidal. The fact you don’t upsample and I do and it’s known they changed the algorithm could straight away be a flag as to why I get a difference and you don’t. Again I’m not saying placebo doesn’t exist however I think it is overstated in audio. So many factors can change sound. The temperature, the humidity, other appliances on your electrical system and the grid. It goes on. There is also the very real things of fatigue etc both mentally and the actually fatigue of our ears. Regardless a very well trained ear gets to know a system over time. Number one on my list for this change would be the major update in which they charged quite a few nuts in bolts in roon even the way files are stored and retrieved the CPU usage because of all the changes to the processing. There is plenty there to plausibly explain a change in sound.
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[Moderated] I’m just using thin as a term of description. It’s not actually thin in the way you are interpreting it and room acoustics, thanks for the lesson I learnt in my diploma 15 years ago. [Moderated].
Since you aren’t happy with the way other users (including me) have “interpreted” your choice of words, what DID you mean by your statement that “the bass is thin in this new version”? No idea how your claim could be misunderstood in any way…
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From what I can gather from reading various posts it appears to be members who are using the DSP engine that are hearing a difference ( for better or worse)
We already know Roon has made some small changes to the algorithms to the DSP engine.
Maybe that is all there is to it and why those who are not using the DSP engine are hearing no change and those that are it then becomes system dependant on whether they think is better or worse?
No need for anybody to get bent out of shape though I think.
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I’m glad Roon sounds as good as ever. No changes here.
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My interpretation of the update was rather that, because it improved the transients, and because those most often bear more high frequencies than low frequencies, made me realize I could slightly up the bass to re-balance the sound close to perfection - although I wish I would be able to be able to reproduce very low frequency transients even better with a better sub.
So it is not the bass that degraded, rather the highs that improved. Can’t you look at it that way ?
If you have a sub with sufficient gain, easy to correct, else I recommend a subtle digital correction but using the HQplayer way has the advantage of having imperceptible insertion loss when property used, at least to my ears and on my system, contrary to every other digital correction I used, including Roon DSP. I don’t use Roon DSP at all (except when I did some polarity tests).
Are you seriously saying that the SQ differences between 1.7 and 1.8 are bigger than the ones between (your) different sources?
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It’s not only related to the DSP engine!
Release notes from Roon 1.8:
Audio stack improvements
The audio pipeline in the Roon Core has been optimized to reduce memory traffic and CPU usage. We have also improved the efficiency and mathematical accuracy of the dithering algorithm used for DSP.
Cheers
NOA
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And thats why i used the word maybe…
Never ever state anything as 100% gospel as I know for certain I do not know everything…lol
But it certainly could be a contributing factor to make an audible difference.
I didn’t want to offence you, just clarify it for all users reading this.
I’m one of those who hear differences with 1.8, and I’m not using any DSP processing at all. I think the overall sound is better as with 1.7.
However, in a system that had been optimised playing with 1.7, this update needs slight changes again in tuning the system into something ‘as good as it gets’.
Happy listening
NOA
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Oh heck, no offense taken at all!
I appreciate the extra information and the clarification on the subject.
As will everyone else I hope!
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Can you share your equipment with us? I’m curious about the gear in question. Specifically router, streamer, DAC.
Were any of your DSP settings changed in the upgrade?
What is your Roon Core?
It might be my imagination but the sound quality using Roon 1.8 is improved over 1.7, both when playing my local library and when streaming from Qobuz. I don’t know what tweaks the Roon wizards did to the RAAT protocol or to the Roon core or player software, but whatever it is THANKS!
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I can confirm the differences I was hearing was down to something to do with dsp engine changes and rendering process. I installed HQ player last night and I’m back to the sound I was used to nice full bottom end with sub setting back how I always had it and a little more air and space as well.
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I may have to look into HQPlayer and see which I prefer in my system.
Exactly. Great point.
Without blind testing this entire thread is entertaining speculation.
Cheers
H
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In my system (Berkeley Ref 3, Siegfried amps, Wilson XLFs) the following are improved: noise (quieter), transients, transparency, dynamics, treble extension, bass depth and texture.