I like the sound of ROON with the Aries G2 and Femto. I like the Aries with Lightening DS as well. ROON and Lightening DS do sound different.
The Lightening DS has a Yin sound: nimbler, more detailed, slightly better image, a lightning fast attack with leading edge crisper. Lightening DS is weak on cataloging and metadata. Especially if you have more than one version of a album like Mobile Fidelity, Hd tracks, FIM. It gets these confused.
Roon in comparison has the Yang sound; thicker, meatier, sometimes more space around the instruments, a little slower and sometimes ponderous ROON is much better with metadata etc. and in general is easier to set up and use.
One could select ROON vs Lightening DS as time controls if you have a light sounding system and want a bit more neat then use ROON. If you have the opposite ten adding a bit of Yin to your system could make it just right.
I would like ROON and Auralic to compare notes and find out why there is a difference in the sound. I’d suspect that ROON requires more overhead and puts more of the processor down.
The two might be closer if ROON was run on the fastest PC possible, But then Lightening might sound better that way as well.
Perhaps the choice of operating systems and add ons like Windows Server, Linux, AudiophileOptimizer and Fidelizer could affect the outcome as well.
I have experienced something similar with my Bryston BDP using MPD playback vs. Roon playback.
It feels real, but it’s impossible for me to objectively A/B/X test this, as the time required to switch between modes is relatively long. I would have to have two BDPs running each mode, playing the same tracks into the same DAC and then switch DAC inputs.
For me, personally speaking, I’ve convinced myself that the difference is due to expectation bias.
I haven’t really listened to a good cd transport in a couple of years. Since my server days and ROON I’ve not been interested. But a good CD transport like the Audiolab is very very good. It puts my PWT (which I sold) to shame and for $599. My dual audio PC and server with ROON and HQPlayer easily bested the PWT.
My friend I wrote about has a (I think) Audio GD transport.
Now the sound quality between the three is very close but easily discernible. I could easily live with the sound of any of them.
But my preference is ROON because its ease of use, sound quality and and great feature sets just make it more “fun” to use. And if ROON goes down or my server I can always plug a hard drive into the back of the Aries G2 and use Lightning DS!
At this point I believe those of us with transports and DACS should compare them to ROON and our PC/servers systems to judge wether which is better. Ultimately our various PC/Servers/Endpoints, and streamers should equal the quality of our CD Transports. As for HiRez files I’d suppose we need to compare SACD player output to DSD ISOs and rips from the SACD. Our computer playback systems should at least equal the output of a SACD Player.
I can’t do the SACD/Streamer comparison as I don’t have a SACD player.
But I’m sure some of you still may have an Esoteric or other fine SACD player you could compare.
Of course all this is in my pre expectations or imagination so some of you may hear no differences at all and that’s ok.