The best ethernet streamer for Roon

[mrvco]

Raspberry Pi running Volumio and the Roon plug-in.

[sound.wave (Chris)]

I have a Holo Audio May KTE. The May’s USB is incredible. You don’t need any fancy streamer. I use a raspberry pi4b running Roon Bridge with Ethernet and connect to the May’s usb interface.

When the iFi Zen Stream becomes Roon certified, I might grab it as an upgrade.

IMHO the Lumin is great but it’s overkill as a streamer to the May DAC. Since you already have a Nucleus, there is very little reason to use the Lumin.

[Apollo (Philippe)]

For those interested to explore the challenges in Digital Audio with minimizing CPU noise and Ethernet / USB jitter between a music server and a DAC, I would recommend listening to the Darko Audio podcast linked below. Warning, it’s about 1.5-hour long and quite dense (I had to listen to some passages 2-3 times…); but quite informative.

[Markus_Hubner]

@sound.wave

When the iFi Zen Stream becomes Roon certified, I might grab it as an upgrade.

The ZEN stream is already Roon ready / certified.
And along with an iFi iPower or even better iPower Elite it’s really performing amazingly.

[Jazzfan_NJ (Listening to JAZZ since 1972!)]

Not exactly coming from someone without a vested interest in selling us something. Hook, line and sinker. But this fish isn’t biting.

[george_ryan]

I’ve gone through several tryouts of name streamers in the last year. Just settled on a Musica Pristina A Capella III, a little known company out of North Carolina. It’s S/PDIF is sourced from the I2s by the designer. Haven’t figured if I like the USB or the spdif output best going to a Lampizator Golden Gate 2 but both are musically stunning.

[killdozer (Brutalise me with music)]

Just having a read about it now. Out of interest what are the machine specs? I can’t find anywhere that lets you know what CPU and how much RAM/storage the unit comes with. Sorry, I’m a curious insomniac…

[george_ryan]

Best thing to do is call Kevin Welsh, lead designer. Nice guy who’s willing to help. 30 day tryout. Ive heard streamers in the last year that were better than twice the cost of this unit and this just paired up with my DAC beautifully.

[Doug_Spitler]

You have gotten a great deal of really bad advice here from people who are guessing and assuming rather than experimenting and listening critically.

You have a wonderful DAC, one of the best made under $10k IMO.

You’ll get MUCH better sound with a real streamer between your DAC and Nucleus than going direct. Think of the streamer as the cartridge on a turntable. You’re playing with the equivalent of a tonearm with a built-in cartridge.

The better the streamer, the better the sound.

There are many good ones out there. Lumin and Innuos can both be Roon endpoints and will mate well with your May DAC. You will need to connect both the Nucleus and your streamer to your network by good Ethernet cables and go USB from the streamer to your DAC.

I don’t believe Aurender can be a Roon endpoint.

I would stick with the Nucleus and not use a streamer as a server, even though many can do both.

Finally, turn off the digital volume control and the DSP functions in Roon for the best sound quality.

[patouskii]

@Doug_Spitler

Finally, turn off the digital volume control and the DSP functions in Roon for the best sound quality.

This is just bad advice really. I come from the same purist view of ”don’t touch the digital signal” but after measuring my system and fixing the one bad and boomy room mode with Roon DSP, I’ve changed my mind. I also upsample with Roon DSP which gives a small but noticeable improvement.

Lastly about Roon volume control, you might want to check this thread and white paper:

Better Volume Control

I followed the discussions regarding the quality of Roon DSP volume control. The discussions revolve around whether it is better to use the device volume, the DAC volume, or an analogue volume control. My concern was to find out the truth about DSP volume control in Roon by measurements just to know and to let you know. Please see my results here: The final truth about DSP Volume Control in Roon | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

I actually use Roon DSP headroom of -12dB to be able to use less digital attenuation on my Linn streamer. I compared these and Roon volume control works better than Linn when you listen to very low volume levels like -40-50dB.

[QuinnT (BANNED)]

@patouskii

I also upsample with Roon DSP which gives a small but noticeable improvement.

Just curious, what Roon DSP options that you are using?

[patouskii]

Max PCM (power of 2) with precise linear filter. My Linn ADSM/3 would support DSD128 also but I haven’t experimented with it yet.

[Valerijus_Jasiulevic (Valerijus Jasiulevicius)]

I use my May DAC KTE with dCS Network Bridge streamer connected via SPDIF or AES. Better option than using USB. Another great option would be Meitner NS1 Streamer. Actually dCS Network Bridge does not have USB at all. Both devices are Roon ready.

[Mike_O_Neill]

Nothing worse than getting Brand X in a Brand Y glass. I agree the Belgians and the Germans have it right.

As a brewer , being proud of brand differentiation, whinged like crazy at lazy bar staff.

That said I would take some convincing about shape. Tasting beer is a 2 stage event , smell first then taste. Try tasting 20 samples at a session checking for defects, smell tells you more at the first stab , but that’s tasting not drinking

[killdozer (Brutalise me with music)]

@Mike_O_Neill

Try tasting 20 samples at a session

I’ll happily take that challenge, in fact feel free to double the difficulty level

[Mike_O_Neill]

You are too quick to offer , have you ever tasted 10 day old ‘just’ fermented beer. The object of the exercise is to spot off flavours while you can still do something about it

By taste I may add is about 20 mls a beer , some of that can be as high as 8% alcohol and still full of yeast before the maturation period that cleans up the odd flavours before the consumer gets at it . It’s a job someone has to do !

Our rota came around every 6 weeks , but as Brewmaster (read boss) I often got roped in more often ….

[killdozer (Brutalise me with music)]

@Mike_O_Neill

have you ever tasted 10 day old ‘just’ fermented beer.

I have as it goes, coming from a brewery town and working in a couple in my youth. I’m now less keen on the offer. Sounds like you were a real team player

[Doug_Spitler]

If you’ve got a boomy room and can’t fix it with room treatment or speaker repositioning, then you’re kind of stuck with it. Same with too much gain on your equipment to use the analog volume control effectively.

The guy on ASR generally doesn’t do any critical listening and IMO won’t admit that he doesn’t know what to measure at what scale.

Trust your ears. Listen to your 10 favorite tracks with the DSP on and off and see which has more clarity, air and detail.

I really loved the convenience of the digital volume control because my tube preamp doesn’t have a remote. After some critical listening without the digital volume control and DSP on in Roon, I couldn’t go back.

[killdozer (Brutalise me with music)]

@Doug_Spitler

Trust your ears. Listen to your 10 favorite tracks with the DSP on and off and see which has more clarity, air and detail.

For me with headphones Roon DSP is better, finding the right convolution filter for you is the trick. Boomy rooms can be improved considerably with DSP also, I use a Dirac box but there are plenty of happy folk using HAF filters and Roon DSP. A bit-perfect stream isn’t a one size fits all affair…

[Jazzfan_NJ (Listening to JAZZ since 1972!)]

@Doug_Spitler

You’ll get MUCH better sound with a real streamer between your DAC and Nucleus than going direct. Think of the streamer as the cartridge on a turntable. You’re playing with the equivalent of a tonearm with a built-in cartridge.

Exactly what is a “real streamer” and at what price point does a “fake streamer” become a “real streamer”?