Sound Quality not a good as expected

Well, “on” or “off” does make an audible difference, doesn’t it?..:joy:

WillK I am not using DSP. I am using a NUC with the wall-wart. I have been told even the ifi supply is better.

:ok_hand: then a set of $3000 new electrostatic headphones driven by a $2000 MITEK + which has headphone out. You can drive this from a good quality Mac i7 CORE or better and get mind numbing love. Or

A battery powered ( big cell phone battery ) $500 Grace m900 also w headphone out and $250 Blue active headphones ( fantastic)

Good hunting. Don’t be a hater.

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Absolutely! :rofl:

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Jim, if you have time please look at my thread

My 2cents. Do a little investment on getting Raspberry pi, install ropieee and use it as your Roon endpoint. Just start with the stock power supply, or any 5V 2.5A power supply.

This is how we get the best SQ from Roon architecture.

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Hello,
I am not in exactly the same situation though when I purchased my ATC passive speakers and AVI lab series amplifier, I was really underwhelmed. I also completely agree with Martin_Kelly on the issue and suspect in general PC computing power is way above what is required. The magic (and I really mean it) difference appeared when I added in a Meridian 218 zone controller. It does what is says on the can and improves the quality of standard CD’s and MQA adds the vitality. Please don’t take my word for it but get yourself a trial.
A further bonus came when I added Roon to my IPad and upgraded the network from DIY junk to Cat6a @ 1Gb/s though the fancy network is not necessary for music streaming. Roon discovered the Chrome-ultra (now redundant) and Apple TV devices in another room and could deliver our complete music collection all around the house----------Bingo

Best wishes,

Geoff

Isiah_Lau, I will thank you.

BTW last night I connected my Lumin as an endpoint and it sounds OK but didn’t thrill me. I will continue and compare configurations. Thank you for all your suggestions!!

The difference in sound quality is probably JPLAY. I tested this difference (without Roon) on my surface Pro2 (i5, 4Gb), which is connected to Advance acoustic X-pre X-mos dac. The difference is overwhelming. I recently installed roon and use JPLAY as the output device. I hear no difference. You should try that. I like Roon because of the Remote apps. Now, my wife and kids can easily listen to their music on Spotify on my High end stuff in the living room, while I use HiRes files and Qobuz for my ears.

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Thank you Chris_Reemer. Are you using Femto? I was not aware that I can use Roon Core and JPlay as an output device. How would i do that?

Just install Jplay femto and make sure it is working with the jplay mini player. Then in Roon you can choose the audio device Jplay driver. I think it is in the zone settings. Good luck.

I have a Nuc with Windows Server 2016, AO, PL, Fidelizer and jPlay Femto, sound is marvellous, better than Nuc as Rock. Configuration with Windows 10 is also better than Rock but WS 2016 is the best.

I have NUC and Femto on the network. I followed instructions from Josef from JPlay and got it working intermittently. When it is playing it sounds gorgeous. I have to figure out why I can not get it to play consistently. even static electricity screws it up.

BTW, this whole Windows sounds better than NUC/Rock thing flys in the face of logic. I mean one would think a dedicated stripped down Linux music server would sound better than a piece of crap laptop (3 yr old i3 with a touchscreen).

It isn’t Windows when you are using third party programmes to shut down everything Windows normally does in the background.

I am amazed at how good Femto sounds. So it seems that I can just have Roon Core and Femto running on the laptop? Is there any advantage in keeping the NUC or should i sell it lol!

If you compare a supercharged engine like Femto to Roon, you bias the results of your perceived quality of sound. It’s like comparing a dCS Upsampler to a Chord DAC, they’re effectively different products which improve fidelity.

Well i got it to play for a little while but not last night. I selected JPlay zone in Roon and it shows that it is processing music but stops shortly afterward. Also no sound whatsoever. Any Help appreciated.

Is there any suggestion from the people that produce this that it actually works with Roon?

Can I come have a listen! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

yes, I am working both angles as I do not know where the issue is. I think it is a setting in JPlay. But I am just guessing