At my place of work, the external consultants that string us along with promises but don’t deliver tend to get the boot pretty quickly.
IMHO your opinion is welcome here. I happen to disagree with the idea that the recent Roon builds would result in different sound quality (versus possibly a different electrical quality if the CPU load differs).
I hope it is understood that there is a lot of snake oil out there, and so there is just a ton of skepticism here, about anything that cannot be demonstrated in a very tangible way. And many Roon users who use the core->endpoint configuration wonder why someone would spend so much money to have a similar sound quality out of a one-box solution.
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Now could you please independently edit your profile to mention this, as is required by the TOS ?
Identical sound quality. The sound is identical to the sound you would have from your laptop, identical from the sound you’d get from a Nucleus, and, as long as they meet spec, identical to the sound you would get from a MOCK you built from parts scavenged in a dumpster.
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Do you have measurements to confirm this statement? 
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WTF does that even mean?
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He’s updating his resume to include consulting with roon.
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Come on. This is just not a credible assertion. That’s like saying helmet A will protect your head just the same as helmet B as long they both meet the same spec. That’ not how things work in real life.
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it’s how digital things work, no?
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No, because they’re locked in the same vault as those from every single audiophile digital cable manufacturer’s.
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As far as servers are concerned, it’s a very credible assertion. I’ll give you another: science denialism kills. And no, I’m not saying audiophile salesmanship is as bad as telling people to drink bleach, I’m just saying believing it is equally delusional.
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But we are talking about these “servers” connecting directly to the DAC using USB. I would be more in agreement with you if this thread were about the Roon Core in a Roon Core/Roon Endpoint configuration. Different servers are going to have vastly different electrical noise levels coming out their USB ports. That will change the analog signal coming out of most DACs.
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Quite frankly, no…
I’m with you with benefit of the doubt as far as directly connected servers, but, being generous and assuming said noise has an effect, I can’t see the point in fixing a, let’s say and being reasonably generous, $2000 problem with a $20’000 device.
And even that’s assuming it can’t be fixed with a properly engineered DAC as had been suggested higher up, or that it can’t be fixed with a $40 RasPi. Hence the out-of-hand, contemptuous dismissal of the proposition itself.
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To repeat this a few dozen times didn’t make it less wrong.
If your DAC shows this behaviour, its design is flawed or it is defect. Try buying a non-audiophile DAC from a company with engineers who knows more about digital audio than esoteric and you will not longer have such problems.
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To repeat this a dozen times doesn’t make you right.
I have listened to scores of DACs from almost as many manufacturers. Cheap DACs, stupidly expensive DACs, and everywhere in between. Some are better than others at isolating themselves from electrical noise when direct connected using USB. But all are affected to some degree.
This is why I use the Roon Core/Ethernet/Roon Endpoint model. I can get an electrically very quiet Roon Endpoint that is massively less noisy than a system acting as Roon Core.
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That actually was the context in which I made my comment about the sound. No matter the core, if you have a separate endpoint, the sound would be identical from any core to the same endpoint. I agree with that.
The other day I was home for a short time and didn’t feel like booting up my normal endpoint. So I connected an Ifi Micro DAC to my core. I could hear the hard drive clicking in the core through my speakers. So yeah, some DACs could be really noisy. Same DAC connected to a low-activity, no fan, SSD endpoint, pretty much dead silent (I mean, other than music…no good if the DAC is totally silent!)
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So what happens in a digital recording studio where the recording interface is connected directly to a pc or mac? Are these recording the noise of the PC/Mac aswell?
Interesting question. I don’t know if an ADC works in reverse of a DAC in that sense. My gut feeling is no, it would not, because the computer would just store the bits. But perhaps the electrical noise could affect the analog input. In any recording I’ve ever done that way, I never noticed anything like that.
Oddly, before USB DACs were a thing, I had some high end prosumer sound cards that did not have that noise issue either. It may very well just have been that the USB cable was acting like an antenna and the noise really didn’t come from the connection as much as the proximity. Either way it is all good with a nice quiet endpoint somewhere else.
In my next home I want a separate server room to hold both the heat and the fan noise, as well as any electrical issue. And the damned fridge for the beer because that is the loudest thing in my listening space.
Hmm, an audiophile fridge. Interesting idea. “As I popped off the cap from my Miller High Life, the soundstage opened before me, and for a minute I thought Jon Bon Jovi was in my living room…”
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I just find it hard to believe that a computer using a DAC just to play music can sound worse than a fully loaded computer working balls to wall with all sorts of effects plugins taxing the CPU and drives and RAM has no effect on the ADC.
Should we all be listening to music and guessing how hard the artists computer was working while he/she made the music?
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So now this is just a social media influencer ad for a $20k music server? Ok, then.
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