It is thinner than the last version.
No good
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Has anyone from Roon weighed in on whether the sound did change with the update to 1.8, and whether the small update this morning was an attempt to address many of our complaints about the changes in sound quality?
This morning’s update didn’t change anything regarding the sound. Pseudo-spatial increase and pseudo-resolution due to the loss of low frequency components. Such pseudo-effects initially simulate an improvement to the inexperienced listener. It can also be of benefit to those who have too much bass in the room. For those who have built a carefully curated audio system, it’s disastrous. If this were freeware I could tolerate it. But I’ve paid a lot for Roon and I get angry when they change the sound of me from one day to the next. Listening to music has something relaxing for me, it gives stability, time out from the constant, ever faster turning hamster wheel. But Roon has become a hamster wheel.
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whatever they do I’m inching closer to buy a lifetime after the trial because I like this sound better (version 1.8) than 1.7, but I run rather a simple setup
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Great question! Roon, please Lend your insight to this issue. Thanks
Exactly. Well said.
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I am so glad I’m such an inexperienced listener…
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Right? Me too…
The curator of my audio system did a terrible job. Abominable job.
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Pardon? what did you say?
I noticed a sound difference right away, but wasn’t going to say anything as this is the Roon forum where bits are bits. Not sure whether the change is for the better or worse yet (sounds thinner but bigger at the same time?). Since I’m a Roon lifer and have purchased hardware to that extent, I’m just going to live with it (same with the abysmal UI). Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about but my unhappiness will dissipate and the Roon player will just revert back to just another piece of flawed software of which there are many. It’s stable and plays my music. About the most positive thing I can say.
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I’ll save anyone the bother of telling me and out myself. My system isn’t expensive enough or my ears good enough to hear any difference.
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The most important thing is after a change in software or gear, do you like the sound as much or more. Sounds like you’re enjoying 1.8, so don’t sweat it. Leave it to anal people like me who love to discuss subtle, barely audible changes with other audiophiles who like to do the same thing.
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There are no differences, Roon delivers bit perfect data to your endpoint via a network. After that, it’s up to your system. That’s the reason you separate the end point from your core, with a network.
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I was jesting Chris, it keeps me sane on here!
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I disagree Chris! I noticed the difference immediately! It was a bad sounding difference. And the only thing that changed in my system was the Roon upgrade. One big difference is my soundstage went from deep into the back wall, to now in my face with zero dimensionality.
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Yes, that is the observation I made too, in my second post of this thread (night time in Europe). Now here are a few checks I just made.
In my case, I am using Roon/HQplayer (HQplayer 3 Desktop) preferably to Roon alone: to me it sounds better using the right settings and is worth the extra licence cost. Maybe what I say does not help for observations of people using for example, Roon DSP, that I don’t use. Essentially I stream as direct as possible from Roon to HQplayer to my DAC, leaving the on-the-fly computational burden to HQplayer, that is a specialty of Signalyst, a partner of Roon.
HQplayer can also play directly via a clumsier interface than Roon. So, I quit Roon, put a critical record on SSD of the MBPro (an orchestra in the process of tuning and waiting to perform, a complex mix of sounds) and played it directly.
As a complex mix of sounds with large span and many noises and instruments playing not in sync, it is a good system test for intermodulation, timbric and stereo accuracy: on a very good system one hears and feels the presence of the many orchestra players. As sound degrades one can count less of them simultaneously (Revue du Son CD Test 10).
Next I start Roon 1.8, leaving it idle however, and play again same track directly from HQplayer. Some very slight confusion appears, all is still there but more difficult to discriminate. I think the only possible difference has to lay in either CPU or I/O perturbations taken by Roon scanning again the library (on network) upon restart.
Next I quit again Roon and recheck, then restart Roon. This time I hear no difference, but upon checking, the volume scanning is finished. And the good news is that playing the same track this time via Roon 1.8 piloting HQplayer, I again cannot tell the difference with the same track without Roon.
I check that on my Mac, that is dedicated to this music playing function, upon playing, both Roon and HQPlayer occupy about 10-12% CPU each. But if activate the throttled dynamic analysis (both Library and while playing), the CPU of Roon goes to 25 to 50%.
Incidentally, there might be some minor confusion arising when this dynamic analysis is activated. Maybe there is some residual interaction between disk accesses for dynamic computations, and those for playing, that despite the RAAT, might introduce some residual jitter.
If Roon Team could measure such things, it would be an interesting check.
I guess for this, the best would be to leave your machine do the dynamics precomputation work outside playing time, where it can be let to use several cores - but then better disable it while playing if perceiving any incidence.
About the remark from GKern above, as a potential cause of temporary jitter with subsequent subtle audio degradation, I am more inclined to believing those extra disk accesses than system optimization of CPU.
Could the size of local libraries, and the time it takes to rescan, play a role in explaining the apparent contradictions between various observations, sometimes positive, sometime negative changes, in this thread ? Say 1.8 is intrinsically better but background library access related to the version change might temporarily create a degradation ?
Anyway, this comparison using HQplayer shows that in normal conditions, the Roon 1.8 core works very well. I should have thought of this check for earlier versions of Roon…
Hope this helps,
PS: I also know from experience that some people perceive jitter better than others, whatever the reason. Actually nobody disputes the fact that some people have a more sensitive vision than others, Not only in terms of qualifying for being a pilot, it can take unusual forms, unseen by usual ophtalmologic checks. For example “fast eyes” - cases of people suffering frequent headache upon working on computer screens with usual refresh rates of 60 Hz, exist. Same for the ears, why would anyone deny such normal variability that is accepted for the eyes and use that denial to draw incorrect conclusions ? Also the ear can be vastly educated and trained. Musicians, sound engineers and audiophiles train their ears, knowingly or not.
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Yes, I always let the computer process the spreadsheet for a week so it gets used to the new income and deductions before I file my taxes.
You are kidding, right?
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For those who hear an improvement in SQ with 1.8 - Congratulations !
For those who hear a deterioration in SQ with 1.8 - consider changing to a topology that separates the Output from the Core. Any change in SQ between versions of Roon is probably due to the computing load on the Core. Using a network device such as a Roon Ready endpoint or a network adaptor running Roon Bridge will provide some isolation from the Core.
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If this is true, then Skynet can’t be more than a week away from becoming self-aware.
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