Maybe 
It does however have more of that hard to explain sense of āambienceā/ āimagingā/ āwarmthā that good vinyl has and digital often lacks. Iād be nice if one of the roon software engineers could pipe in about the algorithm process.
My present stereo setup is essentially studio reference grade thus you can plainly hear subtle differences in any musical source, unfortunate it also plainly shows when a recording is awful which is par for most of the stuff that is not classical or jazz. For example most of the Recordings from the classic Fania all Stars is terrible much to my chagrin 
Do you have Alegre original black label issue or Fiesta records on vinyl? How do you feel those recordings fare in terms of sound quality?
Unfortunately I have no old vinyl. I git rid of it decades ago. My experience with new Vinyl has been mixed there are few truly spectacular rereleases on Jazz, pop has been mostly bad, classics mostly OK, and latin music forget it it simply does not exist. Most old records are to badly aged to enjoy unless you can get one that has never been used.
I am not sure what you mean by MQA does sound boss. Do you like it or hate it?
Again, I played my husband the same song in PCM 192 and then in MQA. He preferred the same as I do. The MQA - and his description amounted to the same reason as I-it sounds more clear, more alive.
Having bi-wired the front speakers and having them actually at the front and not where the surround should be, and now listening only with Pure Direct, I am now going to buy an integrated amp which does exactly what I wanted. It took a while to make myself understood as to what I wanted but really believed that if I can think of it, it must exist. I was correct. There is a range that does exactly what I want.
Sorry for the colloquialism
Boss is very good!
A rare thing in this imperfect world.
No need to apologise. I did think it was probably a positive comment.
Not so rare and our world will never be perfect. Even when we stop discrimination, get rid of the TWIC in the WH, and those evil leaders elsewhere there will still be much pain and suffering to keep us striving.
Can you imagine Roon ever stopping updating? DACs stop improving.
Nothing will ever be perfect.
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but my bank manager says i have to stop upgrading yesterday.
Roon rescued my Squeezebox, but when I compared it to my Ā£1,000 CD player, it didnāt sound as good (no one was telling meā¦I was listening in my own home).
So I recently upgraded to an Innuos Zen Mini. Which initially sounded about the same 
After two weeks of playing with the Experimental setting on the Innuos and the DSP in Roon, my system now sounds betterā¦a lot better.
So I am gutted that the installation of Ethernet cable and lots of shiny new hardware only sounded better when I tweaked the software. But it worked out OK in the end.
My 2006 VW Jetta had a CD player/changer that could play CDs containing MP3 rips. How nice it was to create CDs with 50 songs and have 300 songs at my fingertips. I was amazed at how much better the 320kbs rips sounded on that player compared to the same track on a redbook CD. As I recall there was much more musical information and detail - against a blacker background.
It could also have been due to the replay gain setting I used when I ripped the CDs to MP3. FLAC has a replay gain setting as well, Could this account for the perceived difference?
Not many CDs got played in that Jetta once I obtained an iPod. I wonder where I saved those playlistsā¦
Itās true that when vinyl started making a comeback just about all releases never lived up to the originals. Iād not say now is much better, but more hit and miss. The initial issues were due to less than a handful or pressing plants, now with more pressing plants (not a great deal more), quality control seems to be the greatest issue.
Paying a premium price for either surface noise, warpage and so on just doesnāt cut it as far as Iām concerned.
Iād disagree there - a good āwetā clean etc overcomes any surface noise issues. However, a scratched record is just that & should be avoided. Scuff marks on used records typically amount to zero audible noise. Cleaning is the key as it always was and still is, but cannot overcome inherent defects.
Cheers.
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For CDs I use a CEC TL5100 transport with AES connection into my DAC. I havenāt compared lately, but I didnāt find any notable SQ difference between the CD transport and Roon playing FLAC rips of the same CD. HQPlayer upsampling to DSD made a notable difference.
Iām quite open to the possibility of differences between CD and FLAC in other systems and setups. There is certainly more to it than getting the data correct. There are other influences such as electrical noise or mechanical vibration.
Vibration is a rabbit hole that you dive down at your own risk, but I have found that minimising it gives worthwhile results. Capacitors can be microphonic and many transformers vibrate. I use lightly inflated inner tubes (with a piece of sturdy drinking straw to break the seal) under wooden composite cutting boards (Swedish, you know !) for my tube amps. My DAC and CD transport are on different stands, but the transport is the same stand as the tube preamp. Separating power supplies from signal units is a good strategy in my opinion.
It sounds like you are comparing FLACs played by Roon over a standalone streamer and DAC to a CD playerās integrated transport and DAC. I doubt jitter is a big factor unless youāve got a spectacularly bad CD player or thoroughly pitted CDs. The most likely factor is the DAC and its analog output section, generally most standalone DACs are better than those integrated in a low-end to midrange player.
So it isnāt just us. We prefer HQP to upsample to DSD too but I was told bluntly that there can be no increase in SQ when upsampling. I asked why Roon and HQP both upsample if it was pointless but missed the answer.
Ive never seen the point of standalone DACs given that preamps, receivers and integrated amps have had more than competent DACās. Unless, of course, the DAC is the only component for headphone listening. In general a DAC is simply a chip of greater or lesser capability. Finally manufacturers have caught on to new format insanity and have made the DAC a simply replaceable component as is the case with my Mac C53. In general the oversampling war is nonsense given that 24bit/96 exceeds the audible spectrum, any audible differences are a factor of how good or bad the master recording was regardless of whether it was analog or digital!
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Never know whatās coming (and receivers have always sounded thin to me).
He who dies with the most gear, wins. 
Having said that, let me redeem myself -
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Have you heard the range of Chord DACās? If not, they may well change your mindā¦
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As far as I am concerned the DAC replaces the preamplifier. I am not a vinyl-playing hipster poseur, and analog sources are dead to me since I ripped my SACD collection. And yes, I agree, more integration is generally better like the NAD M10 or M33, although I prefer an open system like a Raspberry Pi to run the streaming as hi-fi manufacturers are generally terrible at software. āStandalone DACā is in the old context of CD player vs. Transport + DAC.
Where do I apply for that job?
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True, but there are also systems that do the DSP in a powerful external computer and send the results to an R/2R DAC in NOS mode. My DAC (Holo Audio Spring 1) has 4 boards chock full of surface mount resistors. Two for PCM and two for DSD, the second boards are used to control linearity. There is not a lot of room in the case.
Upsampling isnāt used to add signal at higher frequencies. It adds āwhite spaceā which enables digital filters to be more accurate with less distortion. Apodising filters also shift noise into the white space.
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