still Amarra, Audirvana and Roon all sound different
who should I sue for false claims? 
Your audiologist 
SJB
I’ve done several comparisons between Roon Ready, MPD (Bryston BDP-1), Amarra, Amarra SQ, and Audirvana Plus for the past 2 weeks. I posted detailed impressions on the same Audiocircle thread as Krutsch mentions regarding all of them.
Ultimately, I’ve gone back to MPD for sound quality. It’s a shame since Roon has such a good software. The sound of MPD is simply more involving and requires less brain power to fill in the gaps that Roon leaves. Also, same WAV files and volume matched everything etc etc. It was fairly conducted.
Were your tests over a significant period of time (30 days continuous). Roon RAAT sounded a little different to me at first, but I’ve grown to like it better than MPD/DLNA.
As we discussed in another thread, check out the microRendu if you have a chance.
Hi Robert, I will definitely take a look at the microRendu for another rig (and I did see your recent comment on the other thread )
Yes, I’ve tried Roon and MPD in both short (few seconds/minutes A/B intervals) , medium (2-3 hours), and long time intervals (5 days exclusiveness and then switch). I know the importance of listening fatigue and memory recall, so I made sure to mix it up.
I can get used to either if needed. I can enjoy both.
The point isn’t even whether people prefer one over the other, all I wanted to get across to both Bryston and Roon was that THERE WAS A DIFFERENCE between MPD and Roon and not a slight one at that!
How can those things matter?
Roon sends a huge data package bit perfect to my DAC over Wifi and then my DAC plays 30 seconds of music without any connection to my server - I can shut down the server and the music is playing along for 30 seconds.
And believe me the sound quality didn’t increase after the server is disconnected from the DAC.
How can in such a scenario (and it’s a typical scenario for all modern DACs) timing and electrical noise have any influence?
Please explain!
I don’t know.
Timing can matter in two ways:
Firstly if multiple clocks need to be resolved. See Brian’s comments here. As soon as a clock-drift compensation mechanism is introduced then the receiving unit is not getting a bit-perfect stream.
Secondly, jitter. This article on Bit Perfect Jitter from the Well Tempered Computer site explains how it occurs and the differences it may make.
Noise from power supplies etc. can be carried by earth wires and affect the receiving unit, without ever being encoded in the signal. This article from the Well Tempered Computer site sets out how such noise can affect a bit perfect stream.
Elegant answer and thank for posting.
Subjective sound quality- If you listen and you think something sounds better / worse than something else, that is an OPINION. You’d need to use blind testing and more than one listener to change the OPINION into a statistically significant FACT. You may disagree with blind testing and statistics, and science in general, and you are of course entitled to this opinion. I’ll stick to facts.
The ear/brain is not a reliable way to determine if something sounds better / worse without enough data and emotion-free experiment design to bring the inference out into the light.
Absolutely.Good post.
Let’s skip whether or not I PREFER the difference, as that’s a matter of opinion. There is quite distinctly A DIFFERENCE in the sound. I don’t have the equipment or training to provide you with scientific data. If I did, I’d do so.
In my setup every player sounds different. Amarra, audirvana, itunes, jriver, pure music, roon.
Agree with Garrett, totally
I have compared Roon SQ with MPD for one week now, on the same hardware, same network, same cabling. While Roon’s interface is astonishing, just the best , its SQ does not compare to MPD. That is not only my opinion, I have many friends, which have the same experience (blind testing was in process too). So thats a FACT. I wish Roon SQ was better than MPD, cause I like Roon very much. But for now I will wait some time till I hear that something have changed , then I will give a try for Roon again.
But did you have Roon set up optimally, i.e. A Roon bridge being the last link to your DAC?
I’m not one of those people who cannot except that there is possibly better SQ available but when you pronounce a FACT we do need some more information about how you ran Roon.
.sjb
John –
You appear to be missing the fact that once spelled in capitals, a fact is raised to irrefutability.
We will have to live with our choices, I’m afraid.
Not only that but everyone hears differently and everyones system sounds different too
There is no right or wrong…trust your ears not what others say, go with what you like, what makes you happy, what sounds best, or if the interface is more important then what looks or works best for YOU, but trust your own judgement and get on with enjoying the music.
^^^ that’s a note to the dev’s right. 
