Its all depending on your setup and your ears but something like a WiiM Pro Plus will likely not get you a bump in SQ. It’s a feature rich product with lots of connectivity but not much attention to control noise and RFI/EMI. It would be a convenience shift → music keeps playing when pc reboots.
To decouple from pc and get a bump in SQ I would look for something like project streambox ultra s2, sonore ultraRendu or build your own with pi2AES.
Also, in my experience, there is a good bump to be gained with Roon server. Moving it to Rock running on a NUC was more convenience move but when I rebuilt the NUC in a fanless Akase case and disabled wifi, audio and all I don’t need in BIOS (wifi and audio also disconnected on motherboard), there was a bump. A better power supply on the NUC was again a slight improvement. If you buy a fast NUC you can set Roon to use less cores for analysis which will again lower the noise floor.
The power supply on the NUC will not affect the sound, I would love to hear how you determined the improvement?
The Wiim Pro Plus is an excellent product, I use one as a Roon endpoint connected to a dac via coax for IEM and headphones listening and hear no noise.
My empiric evidence suggests a PSU can affect the sound. I used a similar device as you did to establish the noise level on your Wiim Pro Plus, my ears.
In that regard, I also do not hear any noise from Wiim Pro Plus but when I compare to project streambox ultra s2, the streambox sounds cleaner with more detail and better imaging and more air in the soundstage. I also have a Mutec MC3+ that I use to reclock signals and with Wiim device this improved SQ, with streambox I couldn’t tell much difference. Again empirical but enough for me to conclude there is a difference in SQ between the 2 devices.
The audio hobby is a journey with many pitfalls, a lot of desinformation, part because of dogma’s preached on certain websites, part by pride of ownership and fanboy’ism what makes people stand up for their brands/devices in a fanatic way. I’ve been on the path of diminishing returns, seeking truth myself in stead of reading about it, paid some expensive learning fees and I’m just sharing my experience and 2 cents with people who are still seeking guidance on this path.
I’m not going to comment any further, no intent of polluting the internet with yet another pointless discussion where other people need to tell me what I can and cannot hear or explain me what an ABX double blinded test is. Last one is preemptive, it will likely come up if we continue the discussion…
FWIW I am not a fan of any brand, I just mention the Wiim because you did and because I have one.
The above seems a sweeping statement with no proof, that’s all.
It’s one thing saying you think one sounds better than another subjectively but to say Wiim didn’t pay much attention to control noise and RFI/EMI.
Ever since the sale of Roon to Harman I have been looking for plan B in case Roon goes away.
I was an Audirvana person before Roon. I still own two permanent licenses for v3.5.50, and still use it on my main computer to check things around (eg local file search is blazing fast, with Roon it is less so). But Roon is my main playback engine by far.
The one thing Audirvana Studio (the latest version) does NOT do is manage multiple versions of albums like Roon does. It can put all your albums in one view - that is local, Tidal, and Qobuz in one view - but grouping albums together with a primary is something it does not do and this one limitation is enough for me not to consider it.
My other playback method is Minimserver serving my library to dCS Mosaic, which works very well though it is not terribly slick.
So for now I don’t really have a great plan B.
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James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
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If you use Roon’s suggested configuration with a streamer connected to core by network then the core doesn’t affect sound quality other than if it has insufficient processing power.
I like Audirvana Studio after trialing it for the last couple of weeks. Sound, imo is fantastic. The only thing stopping me from committing to a subscription (quite a bit cheaper than ROON albeit less ‘features’ of course) is the lack of a server option like ROON Server or ROCK. I currently use ROCK on a NUC which performs better than when I had Server on a Synology NAS. I never liked the idea of having a Windows or Mac machine running just to access media remotely. I’m also not versed in Linux enough for that to be an option.
Although, I’ve been told to “watch out for exciting news to come” when inquiring about a possibility of an Audirvana server-type option on their discussion group. Interest is piqued!
The beauty of ROCK on NUC is no operating system to contend with. It’s also completely headless after initial setup.
Mac Mini of course needs the OS and occasional user intervention if something were to happen. Not completely headless but can use some sort of remote desktop app. Lots of tinkering required, to my understanding, to get the OS to a barebones state solely for media server/playback.
I have an old 2011 Mini and have considered getting an M2 but I still like the NUC.
Well, you can play over UPnP. If you have a streamer that can be a UPnP endpoint, it will show in Audirvana. For example, my dCS Rossini shows and I can have Audirvana running in my office computer playing to my Rossini in the living room, and I can control the whole thing from my iPad with Audirvana Remote.
Right. Audirvana Remote, which I’m fully aware of, requires an always on (or maybe WOL enabled) computer. This type of scenario is what I’m trying to avoid. I have many endpoints, UPnP and otherwise, and want to stream to them from a non operating system-based computer. Like Roon Server/ROCK can.
I still haven’t been informed what is coming as far as new Audirvana features go so will have to wait and see.
This is a feature request I raised on the Audirvana forums. For some reason, people don’t seem to care that much, there was very little engagement on this topic.
To me, this is an absolute must feature given I purchase digital music I like (either rip it from the purchased CD, or buy it from Qobuz/HDTracks/etc). So there are very many cases where I have a local copy, sometimes many (eg Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene”) and then there are versions on Qobuz and TIDAL (I subscribe to both). It blows my mind that this is not an expected feature in playback software.
Now that’s a very familiar artist and title. I have 2 versions of the album myself on CD. The original one and the 25th Anniversary Edition.
I’ve used Audirvana Studio in the past. And even though it would list all the versions of the same album when searching for it. It would never combine them into a coherent listing like Roon does with Versions. They were always separate.
When it comes to Audirvana being a server. It is just not. At least in my opinion.
It excels at handling a sound card / DAC which is connected directly to the PC / Mac on which Audirvana is running. And it can handle UPnP and Chromecast capable devices on the same network. But that is about it if I remember correctly.
For example. It could connect to my Cambridge Audio CXN V2 as it supports UPnP. But it didn’t find my Bluesound Node X. Roon just does.
And the remote app was literally just like a TV remote. Just able to run the software on the computer itself. But vice versa, you couldn’t use your phone/tablet to play music to.
Let alone it doesn’t have a functionality like Roon ARC.
