Moderators are entitled to opinions about their hobby; even controversial ones. Argue with the ideas, not the person or title.
Edit: I want to say this differentlyā¦
IMO, you should make absolutely clear when you are stating something official from Roon, something from the KB, or your own personal opinion. If a bunch of Roon users spend money because you imagine possible RF issues, that makes Roon look bad and does a disservice to the user community.
Iām pretty sure he would be happy to measure a high-end streamer, if someone lent him one.
Moderators are volunteer users who have some admin controls on the forum. We are not representatives of Roon and can never say anything officially āfrom Roonā.
His listening room looks pretty decked-out, so I am guessing thereās a dealer somewhere that would let him āauditionā anything heād like to try. My dealer lets me take stuff home; some of which I buy and some of which I return (more of the former, unfortunately for my wallet).
If it is something you want him to do, Iād suggest getting in contact and helping to arrange a loan. I think he considers the case more or less closed.
Fair enough. I still think all moderators should be clear when they are stating personal opinions, but I suppose that is between you and Roon.
I think itās pretty obvious on the forum when itās a Roon guy (unaware of any gals) doing the talking, the Roon logo being the giveaway.
Weāre not the Borg!
SJB
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Does your dealer let you take stuff with the knowledge that you would be publishing an in-depth review on your decently wide-read blog? Not that i wouldnāt want to see him publish more reviews but i donāt see misrepresenting himself to a dealer as an overall positive thing for the long run.
I donāt know why I respond to anything on this threadā¦ but, sure, I will take his word for it and assume, like some sort of FFT, that we can extrapolate his findings on very low-end devices into very high-end devices and assume heās proven the same result.
Anyway, it was an interesting readā¦
I think you do computer audiophile a gross disservice with that voodoo comment. Have you actually read the threads. There are pages and pages of passionate debate between objectionist and subjectionist. members that just keeps going round and round, just like this thread.
Personally I would rather listen to music then measurements.
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Iād rather not have false dichotomies presented to me, but we canāt have everything 
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This objective v subjective debate (at times heated elsewhere) has been done to death with neither side budging. Lets just let this thread slide or end.
Why? Itās just getting interesting.
Read the sound quality stuff referenced in the KB link, but could not find the referenced settings in the current version of Roon. Frankly, with a 6 core computer and 64BGB of ECC RAM - the vast bulk of which is un-used - it seem unacceptable to me for a product of Roonās quality to not use the all the resources available on the machine it is installed on. Roon should be able to do any needed front end processing easily and put the final bit perfect output stream into memory and buffer as much content as the resource it is running on will support. If you have requested one song or hours of play Roon should have process a bit perfect output queue that is ready to go way before it is time to send it out the USB to the DAC. Simply sending a bit steam which has been pre-processed out the USB port as a high priority task/interrupt without interruption should certainly be simple enough. One of the reasons I purchased Roon was its full support of multi core resources. Does this KB discussion of sound quality when running from a single computer assume that the computer is a typical low to mid level consumer desktop as opposed to an engineering level workstation (which is what I am running)? The brand new audio system I have built/building is more than complex enough without adding more components-))
All it means is you have over-specced your computer. You are of course entirely at liberty to do so, but it wonāt make a jot of difference to SQ how much RAM you have, or whether you have an āengineering level workstationā (whatever the f*** that is).
Hi,
Roon does this, but āway beforeā is a subjective term ā¦ the important thing is that the audio data is always available before it is required, which entails having enough buffer to allow for the variance in data supply rate against the data consumption rate. Roon is capable of providing a bit perfect output stream, period ā¦ having more resources available (which in moderation is not a bad thing) canāt make it any more bit-perfect.
Now there is another factor to consider ā¦ which has nothing to do with the bit-stream itself and thatās electrical noise. A really good DAC is designed to protect itself from this noise, but how good is that isolation ā¦ is it 100% or only 99.9% or worse?
For many, with perhaps a lesser DAC or those that want a belt & braces approach, having the DAC geographically separated and isolated from the electrically noisy server environment via the use of LAN is very prudent.
Ideally the DAC should have itās own network connection which allow it to bypass the USB stage completely, for USB only DACs then adding a low power network bridge like a MicroRendu or similar is the way to go. Either way it can make a significant improvement in AQ.
Thatās enough of the theory, Iād recommend getting such a device and trying it out ā¦ let you ears decide.
If thereās no improvement on your system et al, fair enough ā¦ at least you will know.
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Reading your post, I canāt quite figure out what you want Roon to do that itās not doing. If all you want is to have Roon send āa bit perfect output queueā to your DAC, itās just not going to come anywhere close to using a whole lot of the resources available on your āengineering level workstationā if thatās what I think it is (viz., something with a Xeon processor and 64GB of RAM). As @anon55914447 points out (in his normal brusque style), all you need to output one bitperfect bitstream from Roon is something along the lines of an i3 NUC.
@Carl makes the crucial point that electrical noise and isolation therefrom (not to mention fan and hard drive noise) is an issue that canāt be effectively addressed simply by heavying up on the server hardware.
Carl, it seemed to me the focus of the article was on a single computer the front end for Roon would take so much processor resource at time that Roon might not be able to provide the āperfectā bit stream when it was needed. More processing power should solve that problem. I think I am in good shape on the USB and my DAC, but thanks for the recommendation. I have extended my USB connection to my Lynx HILO Reference AD/DA to 50 feet, and even if it was directly attached I think it completely isolates itself from any computer issues, as long as the computer sends the data as expected. It uses and internal sync clock which is 1000ās of times more accurate that the computer as its internal reference. To be honest, Iām not technical enough to know what all this technology really delivers, but the Lynx HILO and the ChannelD phono preamp are what ChannelD use as their reference system for Pure Vinyl and Pure Music. So far I am extremely pleased with the performance and cannot hear (by ear) any issues. Iāve been the route of chasing the perfect system but at this point in my life I just want something that is consistent, reliable, and bit perfect to my ear. Roon so far meets that criteria running on a single computer. It isnāt perfect - I would like to be able to independently select DSP activation by sample rate so it would be active for my native 24x192, but hopefully that will come in the future. Thanks for your input
But it will probably leave plenty of resources available for some reasonably hefty engineering computations at the same time. 