Anyone can buy and believe whatever they like as far as I’m concerned.
I only have a problem when someone, without providing evidence to back up what they are saying, tries to tell me that either:
I must do something to improve sound quality.
Try to convince me that something I believe is wrong.
So I shall continue to use my £0.79/m ethernet cables and my £3/m USB cables to connect my Raspberry Pi to my Fiio K9 headphone DAC/Amp and my ST60 streamer into my 25year old Denon AVR and I shall enjoy it.
Maybe one day someone will present an argument that I can get behind and I might change my mind but I’m not holding my breath.
I’m not saying my system is as good as it can be. Far from it.
I know that there are things that can be done to improve it and there is plenty of evidence that various elements could be changed or the room could be arranged better or room treatment and even room correction could improve things - but I have to make a compromise between absolute best sound quality, cost and, importantly, living with the system in a room that is used for multiple purposes.
It’s funny how this seems to be the only hobby where people will foam at the mouth trying to convince others that impossible things matter… Look at haute horology, or fancy pens forums. No one pretends that a $200K mechanical watch is more accurate than a $30 quartz thingie, or that a BIC from a dollar store would not write the next Great American Novel just as well as a diamond-encrusted Caran d’Ache. There are entirely different reasons to refer one to the other. But here… I could at least understand that someone having wasted tens of thousands on a “high-end server” would be trying to convince at least himself that it sounds “better.” But when people start claiming that one free software sounds different than another free software program, that just makes no sense at all.
Thanks! Yep. This can be a controversial topic. The are so many settings suggested. Will take a little bit to try each one of them. Multiply n times that when one can have a few stereo setups.
I was comparing using the Elac Discovery Music Server’s analog vs digital as someone suggested the analog out was better. I was surprised I heard obvious difference but it was the digital output. Then I realized I previously increase the input gain of the digital input on my stereo by 3db, so it appeared better. . Then I tried an external DAC with the digital output and found no improvement. Also tried just using the ELA’s as a server and played from Roon Essential vs using the Elac as a Roon endpoint. I was surprised some familiar music sounded better from Roon Essential. A day later I compared again and couldn’t tell the difference. Improvements have been illusive.
I doubt you can back your assertions up with facts or data.
Roon can’t possibly chase the goal of appealing to, or appeasing, a group of mystics who subjectively assert that a thing is better or worse based on fabricated and unique claims. There is no way to win - it’s a shifting sands problem where everyone invents causality and asserts that their subjective assessments are valid in the absence of any sort of legitimacy, repeatability, or measurability. Suggesting that Roon can appease this group is equivalent to suggesting that Roon get together a devout adherent of every religion on the planet and try to convince them all that one single religion that Roon invented is somehow the true religion.
I would prefer Roon to lean even harder into the fundamental and provable truth that the digital domain is deterministic and that the rules of physics and logic apply. They know this to be true, as do most of us here. We also know that the “audiophile” domain is full of folks who don’t want to believe this, and Roon wants and needs this group as customers. So they walk a fine line. It’s a tough job.
I get pulled into these conversations again and again. I have no interest in trying to convince the people on this thread that they’re making stuff up. I get pulled in because I want to protect everyone else from buying into hocus pocus. That’s my, as the kids say, toxic trait.
10 Likes
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
69
I will say this: while I tend to side with the science and engineering believers: (1) I think an open mind is good because some things may have an as-yet undiscovered scientific explanation and it could result in audible improvement (except, as above, I’m not just going to let specious things go), but, more importantly (2) I would rather be friends with someone passionate about audio, even if they’re superstitious about it, than be seen as an enemy or adversary because of a difference in audio philosophy.
What gets me is when it becomes venomous and toxic. To be honest it isn’t really that bad here compared to, say, Audiogon, where someone will post about a blue directional fuse and someone else will post that they don’t believe in those and then the fuse gang literally tells that person to get out of the forum, or AudiophyleStyle where there are parts of the forum that literally have a rule against posting different opinions.
Echo chambers don’t do anyone any good. Neither do ad hominem attacks.
I think it becomes venomous and toxic when fact checking is seen as unfriendly or adversarial. I would rather be friends with someone to whom I can speak my mind.
Thanks, @James_I. Your post is a helpful reminder that I don’t belong in these threads. I know too much about how computational devices, networking, and the laws of physics work to be much fun in conversations like these
6 Likes
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
72
It depends entirely on the subject. I’m not open-minded about the shape of the earth or climate change, for example. More to the subject at hand, I don’t believe digital data and the machines that transport and process it have any unknown, magical properties.
Just trying to get my post counts up here maybe up…
Roon out the box and plugged into a DAC sounds pretty flat to me compared to other software. Maybe Roon is accurate and digital audio is horrible to begin with?
But, put a streamer and nice DAC with Roon in the other room and it instantly is better. It takes on the characteristics of the DAC not the software. Can I do something to Roon to make it better? From another room across a PoE switch? No, I don’t think so.
But, if you’ve still got your DAC plugged into your “server” go all out with the mods and tweaks and whatnot. I’d rather put it in another room and get to listening. And, no, I don’t have an “audiophile grade” switch. I just can’t a company to send me one on eval. Maybe its my bias of knowing how they work?
Just a sharing from my experience. I dedicated a fanless NUC with 2 SSD inside, and a fanless pc also got 2 SSD inside for Roon system, also a new but abandoned Raspberry Pi 4B.
I ran ROCK in my NUC, and now I run Roon server in a highly trimmed Ubuntu Server 22.04 with its official Realtime kernel in a fanless PC, and then Roon Bridge in another highly trimmed Ubuntu Server 22.04 with its official Realtime kernel in NUC. Because I found that Roon server will increase system latency terribly.
You can tell Roon server causes 100 times worse in latency.
In my understanding, Roon Bridge will store a buffer of processed music data from Roon Server (I heard that’s 10 seconds, well, leave it), before sending these music data from memory to the output, e.g. USB. So using a Roon Bridge would induce the lowest latency for music playback. In another words, better sound.
Of course there are some other ways can be shared to make the best of Roon to sing from my experience, yet I don’t want to waste time and energy in Roon forum war.
I was lucky once to have a tour of the McIntosh factory in Binghamton, NY. At one point, I asked the fellow who was giving the tour, “What do you do when you’re not giving tours?,” and he said, “I listen to rich people complain.”
Under “Device Settings” → Advanced is “Buffer size”
It’s not there for all devices. When I’ve set this to the lowest number either the audio had issues which meant network issues (wifi or other) or I thought the sound quality got better. I always suspected short buffers = more “real time” and less latency and buffer management.
Anyway, I mention this because it maybe relates to your findings as well? When talked about, Roon says this setting doesn’t do what people think it does and actually is used differently for different endpoints. When available though, I do set mine as low as possible. Whatever it’s doing, or not doing, I do believe lower is better.
So, you might be showing some real hard data on why simply using a bridge can improve sound quality. Nice work. A mini PC would also be a benefit in the same way.
I don’t want to stir the pot, but how could buffer size affect sound quality? In any digital signal chain there are multiple buffers, e.g. routers, switches etc. Networks can’t function without buffers.
Lower equals less time between hitting the play button and hearing the sound, so in that case it’s better, but are you also suggesting that the sound quality is better when the buffer is smaller?
. Then I tried an external DAC with the digital output and found no improvement. Also tried just using the ELA’s as a server and played from Roon Essential vs using the Elac as a Roon endpoint. I was surprised some familiar music sounded better from Roon Essential. A day later I compared again and couldn’t tell the difference. Improvements have been illusive.
