Entirely missed my point altogether. I was comparing the so called âsimplicityâ of turntables vs digital add ons, not the sound quality, though imo just as you describe how upgrades to the TT chain can bring improvements, I believe the same can be said for digital streaming. Both are âphysics.â But I wouldnât expect any give on that front from the bits are bits crowd here. That said, it really doesnât matter one whit what I may be enjoying due to my optimization of my streaming set up pre-DAC and what you may be missing by not doing so (or believing it doesnât matter vs actually trying a few things - thatâs called empirical evidence vs internet hearsay evidence).
We obviously both enjoy the sounds of our setups so I guess that is the end all. I just wish you wouldnât dissuade people from trying to get the best sound they may want by trying better switches, cables, fiber bridges etc. Because they do make a difference - maybe they shouldnât by some reasoning that was come up with years ago that didnât have high end audio in mind, Iâll grant that - but they do. Now how much difference vs how much it costs Iâll leave that up to the consumer and their pocketbook comfort. Personally Iâd pass on the four figure or even three figure ethernet cable (or RCA for that matter), but go big(ger) on the switch or fiber bridge and accompanying power supplies.
So I just had a group of audiophiles here at my house to hear my new setup (Wilson Alexxâs, Audio Research REF6SE and REF160S, dCS Vivaldi stack), and many of them did not like the sound of music streamed from Tidal or Qobuz when compared with that from my local SAN/NAS via RAAT (to Ethernet of my dCS stack). I could barely hear a difference, but every one of them heard what they referred to as more open dynamics, less compression and better openness of the soundstage.
I frankly think there were other issues at play in this particular case - for example availability of only one filter for MQA or different filters for 24-Bit vs Redbook 16/44. So my answer to the OP and both of you on this reply is that itâs likely related to differences in how your DAC handles RAAT vs other streaming protocols coming over the Internet. Theyâre damn close, but there is a very, very narrow difference between these on some systems and I donât believe itâs possible to compare âapples to applesâ in every instance.
I now have to say I now mostly agree with you about the variability. I now see why this would be a challenge for Roon to reproduce.
I donât fully agree though with how you stated the issue. System transparency will dictates whether the differences stand out to you or not. No, I donât think the solution is to make your system less transparent so the harm that Roon does becomes less evident. But it now makes more sense to me as to why Roon avoids following us down the rabbit hole. Thereâs a cost that comes with that in terms of assembling a sufficiently-transparent system.
Iâve already posted my last system (Boulder 2000 series amp, preamp, dCS DAC and Wilson Alexiaâs) â I feel like at the rate I change gear Iâm going to be posting photos every year LOL - But Iâll get you guys a photo if you like - why not ?? I realize itâs off topic, but this ARC gear made me get rid of my Boulder Gear - itâs that good. And what can I say about the Alexxâs other than theyâre insane.
Everyone who thinks Roon isnât up to âaudio snuffâ: Itâs used by Every High-End Manufacturer - from Boulder to Wilson to Dâagostino, dCS, etc. etc.
Edit: Hereâs the post I just made of my system as requested:
Are you confident that the albums you have stored locally are the exact same masterings as those on Tidal or Qobuz? Differences in masterings can have a huge impact on dynamics, compression, soundstage, etc.
You do realize that as soon as I connect the USB cable from a computer to a DAC that they begin to share the same ground? You do realize that once these are connected, noise in one now has an electrical path to the other?
There is an analog stage in a DAC. It has circuits that are sensitive to noise. If the computer has a noisy interface thatâs dumping noise onto the shared ground plane, it has the potential to degrade audio performance. Thatâs a fact that every DAC designer has to deal with. Even computer manufacturers have had to deal with it with different noise suppression techniques.
You cannot have a full understand of whatâs going on here if you donât account for whatâs happening in both the analog and digital domains.
I could explain why thereâs not an issue with images but I have to believe that you had to have already heard an explanation.
If I had spent so much on Hi-Fi and it caused me this much angst regarding what to stream I would chop it in and buy a ghetto blaster and be done with it. I would hate to be on the edge of my seat trying to constantly pick faults rather than relaxing.
I typically have several versions of albums that are used as reference music for demonstration so we went through them all. We couldnât find one that sounded worse out of my local collection. The majority of the ones that Iâm referencing are that way (sourced from Redbook CD ripped to WAV AND FLAC which we even flipped between). But there were of course masterings I had that blew away what TIdal had because they just didnât have access to the DSD that I did.
This a logical fallacy. Their use of it doesnât necessarily make it âup to audio snuffâ. Itâs what their customers use plus it has the best user experience of any music player application.
What we donât know is how their employees feel about Roon once they settle back into their own listening chairs at home.
You mentioned dCS. Just last year they launched Mosaic. And while they provide support for Roon, they also claim that âMosaic represents a leap forward in terms of functionality, performance, and user experienceâ (Italics mine). Certainly they feel that there was a need to have another solution alongside of Roon. Maybe itâs simply because some of their customers donât want to pay for Roon. I think we have to be careful about what we assume.
What I do know is that 1) Aurender has refused to support Roon because they think sound quality will suffer, 2) Innuos is in the process of building their own substitute for Roon and they formerly added an âexperimentalâ mode because of customer complaints about Roonâs sound quality 3) Taiko is also building their own substitute for Roon based on customer complaints about Roonâs sound quality 4) Auralic had previously mentioned that their Lightning solution sounds better than Roon [I was formerly a customer of theirs, but I donât know their current stance on it].
In my particular case, one of my systems (Sonore microRendu/Mytek Brooklyn DAC+) does handle RAAT. The other (my main system 2nd Gen Linn Klimax DS/1) doesnât support RAAT so it doesnât receive a RAAT stream from Roon.
However, like you I find any differences in sound quality of local vs Internet based streaming to be rather small and subtle, if there at all.
Different streaming systems can have subtle and at times not so subtle impacts on sound. At one point in time a number of years ago I was using a Naim Audio streamer (with its internal DAC DAC) in my 2nd system and ran a number of blind (not double blind) tests with a couple of friends to determine whether or not they could detect a difference between uncompressed FLAC music files, and the same files transcoded into WAV.
Now, there should be no difference between the sound of the two sets of files, but many Naim Audio owners had posted that a difference did indeed exist, and that WAV files invariably sounded âbetterâ on their systems. I wanted to check this out on my own system. I had previously âthoughtâ that I could occasionally hear a slight difference, but the difference was so subtle I thought it might be expectation bias on my part.
When I carried out the blind test with my two friends (both Linn users themselves), one of them was able to accurately tell the difference (and state that the WAV file sounded slightly better) around 60% to 70% of the time - impressive, but maybe not quite conclusive?, However, the other (who happened to be an audio music engineer and producer) was able to tell the difference around virtually 100% of the time with the WAV files sounding better to him on virtually every time.
Interestingly, we could not replicate these results in my (significantly better) main system incorporating my Linn Klimax streamer nor in their own systems.
Awesome post! I wonât be able to respond until after work today or maybe tomorrow. Thank you so much though for the very substantive contribution to this discussion.
Yes, I would love an improved sound quality of Roon.
The Roon audio level is still not the same as Auralic is delivering. Auralic is more refined and opens a next curtain both on my own ripped music and Tidal.
When I want to do serious listening I need to use Lightning software from Auralic (that I donât like). And when I like to explore new music I have to use Roon with it borderless integration of Tidal, rich meta information and the possibility to tag music.
I have Roon core running on a DiskStation to reduce software activity on the streamer (Auralic Aries G2). How to improve Roon to get it to the same level as Auralic/Lightning does? Am I wrong when I think the difference is the software?
Not looking for features, bit perfect is perfect.
No resampling nor equalizers needed.
Merry Chrismas!
I use to have the original Aries. Lightning was still in itâs infancy but then Roon came along and we begged them to support it. Once they did, we got to hear reports of Lightning sounding better. The owner basically said that there is really nothing he can do to improve Roon. Iâm paraphrasing, but the gist was that their OS just boots up the Roon code so thereâs nothing they can really optimize for their hardware. Very different story with Lightning as they have full control of it with tight integration around their hardware.
If Roon (more specifically RAAT endpoint code) is believed to be a source of interference somehow (ie its activity within the endpoint device was somehow causing additional USB noise to the DAC which it was failing to reject adequately), then this should be quite easy to prove/disprove by specifically testing the suspect equipment chain over time and attempting to correlate the activity within RAAT to any detected change in the noise levels of an analog output. Additionally one could put a capture scope on the USB supply rails and attempt to correlate with that too.
As for testing method, I guess something similar the the tests performed over at audio science review when testing a DAC except that a synthetic stream would be needed from the core - ie a prepared WAV or FLAC. If asked nicely - maybe the ASR folks would even helpâŠ
I moved from using Meridian protocols with Roon, M218 to RAAT with M210. Did I notice any audible difference? Nope, just subtle refinements in control and the ability to sync with other RAAT zones.