Hi Eric,
When you have roon processes distributed over 20 physical cores, you can get great sonic results
Wellā¦ This is embarrasingā¦Big oopsieā¦ SOā¦ Ummmā¦ hahahahahaā¦ I was doing my Angel AB Melco / lightweight player VS roon + Taiko compairson kinda ummmā¦ wrongā¦ I had roon playing the Qobuz version and the Melco playing off the fileā¦ hahahahahaā¦ OOPSā¦ So my HUGE issues were really local files VS Qobuzā¦ hahahahaā¦ Operator errorā¦ I blame the GUI ! hehehehe, I swear it was not the operator !!
SOā¦ Getting this RIGHT nowā¦ Its VERY close. Its now in the realm of burn-in for the Taiko Mundorf caps. Maybe switch burn-in. There is still a difference, but, its clearly in the right leagueā¦
Upon advice from CH, I turned off the MQA. The reasoning was complex, but, this did really improve Qobuz. With my hardware MQA = offā¦
Soā¦ Sorry for my false red alertā¦ Oopsieā¦ heheheheā¦ I will do a bunch of burn-in and report back after everything is settled inā¦ I have not tried USB yet, but I intend to.
OHā¦ I did settle on a network topology that worked best for me.
Taiko optical > SoTM Switch with ext clock to CH T1 > Optical > SoTM switch ext clock > CH C1d DAC Ethernet > optical to outside world. This opto isolates the server, the DAC and the outside worldā¦
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Happens to the best of us, especially to luddites like myself! 
Iāve done that myselfāmy audio system, even working on a car. Look over everything, digging so deep into every single part, only to find the simplest (dare I say ādumbestā?) error that was staring me in the face the entire time.
Iāve generally had excellent results with Qobuz, virtually identical to CDs or local hi-res filesā¦but only if itās the same mastering. Sounds like you hit a bum version of your album on Qobuz. But, no matterāyouāve found the issue!
Glad you got things working to your satisfaction!
It is something of a rite of passage on this site to post āstupidā things weāve done. So donāt go thinking your are somehow special. 
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Good to hear Chris,
Now what you need to try and report back is the following
Copy the file from the Melco on to the PCIe storage on the Extreme
Choose carefully from roon and compare the SQ of the file coming from the Melco and coming off built in storage
Already did that. The Taiko is burning in. Next week I will do a proper AB. Im also burning in 2 SoTM switches. Im also going to get a reasonable USB cable to listen to that.
Glad Chris found the probable point of departure, but it does sort of beg the question.
Why should streaming sound worse than local storage, given equivalent resolution files and same Master ?
I canāt hear a difference on my system, but I donāt have good SQ discrimination or a system as resolving as this one.
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Wellā¦ I just assumed there was compression or something extra going on. Honestly I have not looked to closely to these streaming services to know what they are doing with the stream. I just assumed its was not the same starting file, or, some compression had occured ?
Im not quiet sure what turning off MQA did, but, things are better. I have not looked fully into what turning that off didā¦ Maybe it works best with Meridian gear ? Not so much with CH heheheheā¦
But yes, big obvious differenceā¦ I guess im just old, but, I consider these sptreaming services kinda like radio. Radio canāt possible be as good as my 1/2" 2 track open reel tape on a Studer. So to my mind streaming canāt be as good as local files. It would be good if it could tho.
Itās all in the mind.
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Which lightweight players are you referring to, Chris?
In my case UPnP. https://minimserver.com/upnpav.html and the CH precision appā¦
Indeed music is a ethereal experience for sure that is possibly governed by deterministic probability. Experiencing reality, alters it. Measuring, changes itā¦ After all, what is reality anyway ? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-issues/
So im thinking about a network topologyā¦ This seems about right to meā¦
The CH Precision gear needs to connect to networking and be PoE.
Maybe youāre dreaming this and none of us are really here posting on this forum??
We both are and arnāt.
I believe many MQA DAC products cannot switch filters on the fly for MQA/non-MQA music. So they choose to always enable MQA filter when you enable MQA, even if youāre not listening to MQA music. If you like MQA filter, then this is fine. If you donāt like the sound effect of MQA filter, then you may find that turning it off sounds better for non-MQA music. (This is not the case with Lumin products - we properly choose filters by predetermining whether a music is MQA or not.)
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Hi Chris,
have a look at https://www.audiodata.eu/products/musikserver.html
First you should not expect a ānormalā pc or notebook or Intel core to be āaudiophilā. These items are designed to process data, but as we know in the meantime, digital data of music are sensitiv to several aspects of disturbance ( which are irrelevant in data processing ). Some of these aspects can be avoided by a special hardware layout.
Second, what audiodata offers is a correction system, which is not only able to correct problems occurring from the audio hardware but additionally can correct problems from room acoustics as well. To some extend it is more effective to invest in such a special audio server and correction system instead of even more expansive equipment.
[Mods have established that this user has no commercial affiliation with the product and have unhidden the spam Flag.]
This is a very interesting stream. I also have a high end Naim system and I cannot tell the difference between steaming from Qobuz, streaming from the NAS or playing a CD of the same file in WAV format. CD may have an edge sometimes but you have to be very attentive and focus to find out.
In one occasion I was having problems with the SQ via streaming. The CD was sounding much much better. At the end I found that I was using a shielded Ethernet cable that was creating a problem with the ground of the system. Changed the cable, problem solved.
Now to listen more music!
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Iāve spent considerable time trying to find what I consider the best sound for my listening environment and have found that a signal path with the least amount of processing gives me the ācleanestā sound and allows me to hear the music as it was recorded. I let my dac do the decoding and rendering and use Roon as a bit perfect player which allows a lossless path from beginning to end. Everyoneās āearsā are different but this works the best for mine. Other than that, I have no idea what you might need to do and can only suggest you try a ālosslessā path and let your "earsā guide you. Keep smiling.
Hi! Just a few observations from someone trying to optimize sound while using roon. The best may be to completely avoid going through a switcher and go directly from a high quality storage to your dac. I found keeping my music on a dedicated audio storage (I use a Melco N1 server) helps a lot even with use of a separate roon core on a pc. But the best would be a dedicated roon nucleus with storage, or better an Innuous Core/server. Read the reviews. This would directly feed your dac, optimize for quiet storage and allow ripping all without going through a noisy switcher. Iām saving upā¦heard it at my stereo shop. They are great.
http://www.innuos.com/en/catalog/go/music-servers-mk3