For me,
Audirvana pros
- Cheaper, way cheaper.
- Less buggy : in Roon music stops every 25 secondes when I use my Mac mini with Roon (i5, 8go, SSD - Late 2012 model). It’s useable.
On my other computer, it works well…Even if sometime it just loose connection with my amp and I have to unplug and reboot the amp to get it work again (it’s a Roon ready amp). - Roon’s interface is way prettier but it’s confusing sometimes.
- Sound quality : I don’t explain it and I even didn’t know that a software could have an incidence on sound quality but it did. For vocal jazz at least (I listened only three albums of Diana Krall’s), the sound is crispier, warmer and simply more enjoyable with Audirvana.
Roon pros
- The interface
- The possibly to use it with multiple cores.
- The ability to easily set a multi-room system.
- The editorial work.
- It’s prettier (again, it’s way much prettier)
- It’s easier to customize metadata
So for me, it’s great that the two software exists but I can’t say that Roon is clearly better. If Roon wants to be on top, two parameters should be revisited : the price and the sound quality.