Consultant, not influencer, please. We’re a distinguished crowd here.
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The interesting thing about this, is there are similar arguments in the pro audio world.
Now 1 or 2 or 3 people here that have pro audio experience will jump in and say that is rubbish.
But they don’t speak for all their peers. They only speak for themselves and maybe their circle of friends.
Here is one thread over on Gearslutz, that features a mixture of recording, mix and mastering engineers, some Grammy award winning.
That is just one thread. I could link 1000 such threads from Gearslutz forum, that again features a mixture of mix and mastering engineers, many award winning… I’ve had interesting private convo’s with some famous Grammy winning engineers too…
The conclusion (to me) is simple. Just enjoy whatever brings you enjoy.
Life is short.
There are pro audio engineers with such gear that also get into these debates… Again, not everyone in pro audio is interested in these debates… much like in casual HiFi world you have some that are interested and some that aren’t…
Same conclusion to me… just enjoy what you enjoy. Life is too short.
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Great post, @dabassgoesboomboom.
I stopped hunting for perfect USB cables and HDMI cables a long time ago. I buy quality reasonably priced cables that sound great and stop there. I make my own interconnects using Duelund DCA20GA and quality connectors. I use Duelund DCA16GA for speakers cables as well.
I have a DAC, tube preamp, and tube amp I like a bunch and I listen to music. I am a music lover that uses equipment to listen to music…I am content with my setup. The only upgrade itch I have is for speakers…
I’m wondering if the different format releases have a different sound?!
Even before i knew this thread existed my first impression of release 537 was a pleasant surprise as IMHO it sounds better, the best so far in fact!!
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I’m very happy with my USB dacs cant say I listen for noise only music. Just tired my Hiby R5 tonight on my new Surface Laptop via USB sounded awesome.
There is some good-natured joking here, but I saw a room audio expert talking in all seriousness about the pernicious effect of having a ceiling fan on the room. That sounds more plausible to me than some of the other stuff being circulated.
But my personal observation: I do in fact have a ceiling fan in my listening room, and I could easily make a test, comparing the sound with and without the fan on. But I’m not going to. Because when I’m listening to some music, my focus is on what Stefano Battaglia is doing with the complex orchestration in the piece, not on whether I have that last iota of sound quality. The sound is fine.
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Guys,
We have original topic for this matter.
Please come back!
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Great informative thread…
It’s a really long one to follow, so perhaps I missed it somewhere, anyone had the ability to compare the latest release with the previous one side by side on the same identical pieces of kit?
Not sequential listening, but a side by side comparison?
For a manufacturer that should be easy to do.
I’m afraid my experience doesn’t agree with that at all. I wish it did.
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Someone could run an Ethernet sniffer between current and previous version - to see if there is a difference or prove that everything is 100% identical.
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That won’t do any good … it’s not the bits, but something else that can’t be measured … maybe it’s in the æther!
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I see, it‘s about side effects of the new build - causing the hardware it‘s running on to provide in total a worse performance.
CPU usage, memory allocations etc. is actually something to debug, performance profile & compare.
But I guess Roon is already investigating this.
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Using an endpoint will jump the whole problem, IF there is a problem. Actually, buying a cheap Raspberry Pi setup will void the point of having a $24.000 server.
I’m stupid, I run two DACs direct from the core via USB. And I’m keeping it like that, because my cheap DACs don’t pick up noise and I’m probably an “unexperienced listener”. I must really be missing out.
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Back in the eighties I knew people who disabled the autostart and stop function of there turntable because it suposed to negatively affect sound quality, some even went so far as cutting of the armlift as well. Anything beyond the very basics was said to be a no go.
In the nineties I knew people that disabled the display of their CD player because it was supposed to be of negative influence on sound quality. Some even went so far as ripping the entire display out together with any remote receivers and headphone outputs. Anything more than spartan basics was a no go for sound quality.
Nowadays people buy 20 core computer servers but are highly afraid to use any service or any application that could use just a tiny part of the cpu resources because it is supposed to have a negative impact on sound quality. Maybe it is just my highly suspicious mind but I’m beginning to see a patteren here.
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Seems to be a bit of hate here! Ridiculous!
Why not just be glad that you don’t have to spend more money since you don’t hear any difference?
I could say there is a point of diminishing returns for which a person can decide for themselves whether it is worth it or not. If you don’t hear it then GREAT! Don’t buy it, return it, or sell it…
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Where - in what form? Envy? I only see people with a ridiculous understanding of digital audio - and I don’t envy them.
I am!
No one is arguing that. But using $20.000 when $2.000 is more than enough is ridiculous for me, even if you have too much money to spend. Better buy new loudspeakers or build a new listening room.
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This is almost certainly hardware specific though. If the extra activity has an impact on the particular hardware infrastructure they use, but has zero impact on the low core count, mobile processor architecture Roon favours then is messing with that something Roon needs to do. I applaud anyone willing to debug their own hardware to give their customers the best experience. But I remain unconvinced that this is something that reflects badly on Roon, as has been suggested by some here.
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I think it’s hilarious that people think they need computing power to listen to a digital stereo file multiple times greater than was probably used in the recording studio to record the music.
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I was listening to uncompressed 16bit WAV files when I used to have a 486 with 8mb of ram.
People really seem to think it’s a dark art or something. The problem is that the press and manufacturers want you to think that’s how it is. If you see the magicians tricks, they’re not magic any more.
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“ridiculous understanding of digital audio”
Heh, that can be said from multiple positions of the what we can hear (or not) debate.
“new speakers or …listening room”
People often start with a less beneficial order of priorities. Adjusting speaker placement a bit or some room treatments might help more. Some tweaks are free… if you wear glasses try taking them off while listening.