I do not understand how there can be any satisfaction, an audiophile never seems to be content with their lot. There is always some other doohickey, gadget, cable or expensive component that they need to achieve perfection…
I have no desire to be an audiophile, I care about listening to music not sweating about gear/minutiae.
It’s okay to tweak and upgrade. Unfortunately, that becomes the task, and the focus on the music listening gets lost.
This is where is find myself. I go down some rabbit hole trying to improve my setup and forget it’s really about enjoying the music. There’s always going to be more tweaks and money to be spent to try and make the same improvements over and over. You basically hear an improvement each time but then you get used to it so you need to tweak again for another round of improvements. I’m seriously considering a massive downgrade for a fun system over the most technical. I kind of feel like I lost my way over time.
I didn’t ask because it wasn’t germane to the discussion.
I understand why some need Roon to be perfect but the moderators will remove my explanation. No, I won’t change the mind of those firmly in the Roon can’t sound better camp. [Moderated].
Please, no! This topic has been a subject of audiophile nervosa since the days when separate DACs first appeared on the market. There is enough archived discussion on jitter available on the Internet to fill hundreds of volumes. Many research papers have been authored on the subject. But most importantly, technology has advanced enough over the last 20 or so years, principally in the DACs themselves, to eliminate jitter as a threat to the audio signal.
This is wrong, I’m afraid, and it’s further evidence of an analog mindset trying to grasp the digital domain. By this same logic, the files written out to disk on a heavily-utilized database server would become increasingly corrupt over time. This does not happen.
Believe me, I will not. I agree with you, I just wanted this thread to stay on topic.
BTW, I hope Roon just writes in the 1.8 release note “Improved sound quality”, regardless, everyone will be happy.
I think you should read on up digital audio and especially jitter, which has no effect on non-timed data typically used in computer tasks like copying a file or reading/writing from/to a DB. This is a common fallacy by computer people with their “bits are bits” argument, and is a result of lack of knowledge and understanding.
Let’s find common understanding and not polarize and stereotyping groups of people, and give them opinions and characteristics. Attack an argument with an argument. Behave.
This is a very honest response and I commend you for making it! I have at times felt myself being pulled in this direction, where I need some new streamer or turntable to be happy with my equipment. I can see it would be a slippery slope.
These kinds of discussions bring it home to me; where the most infinitesimal improvements (if they exist at all in reality) seem all consuming for some.
I try to keep my focus on the music. My gear is not the greatest or the most expensive, but it works well, plays nicely with Roon, sounds good to me and plays my favourite music!
For those who want to read up on jitter, here is an article that seems ok (I only quickly browsed it though). Notice the figures and how everything is bit-perfect, and yet the output can vary quite a bit. Its somewhat complicated but its an important concept in order to understand digital audio.
Skimming through that, and assuming we are talking about Ethernet or USB (rather than e.g. S/P-DIF), the article says the only jitter of interest is in the DAC’s internal clock, and that the primary sources of jitter are due to the DAC’s own clock and power supply. That seems a perfectly reasonable conclusion.
It is, but they don’t take the reasoning the whole way. Better power sounds better because it has less noise, so the oscillator will be more accurate (i.e. less clock jitter). But power is not the only place that creates or carries noise, for example CPUs are notorious noise-generators, and that includes the CPU in the USB controller (for example XMOS).
It also explains why a transport is important, even if USB is asynchronous.
The analog domain can’t be excluded since we are talking about sound quality. You are wasting your time time if you are trying to reason with an individual who thinks this isn’t pertinent.
There is always the risk of taking a line or reasoning too far, of course 
It sounds plausible but in order to demonstrate that the extended reasoning is still valid, one needs to gather objective data. Relying on subjective listening doesn’t prove that the extended reasoning is valid - it’s essentially “marking your own homework”. Not that that matters a jot if you like what you hear, though.
Well I got my money for my system thru an inheritance and thought I could get an end game system and be done with it. But then you have suggestions of upgrading every cable you own, buying power conditioner, redoing all the wiring in your house, changing out power supplies, and so on and so on. It really doesn’t end.
It’s not that I don’t believe changes exist, but what’s the goal? Do I need any of this to enjoy my music? When is it good enough? Maybe it’s time to simplify things. Worrying about the smallest of differences that software can make is not improving my enjoyment of music but taking away from it.
I am sure some of it could be shown on a typical 12khz jitter measurements, but for me listening and reasoning is enough (I hate when listening and reasoning don’t tell me the same thing though) 
I have done exactly that. Gone from aesthetix calypso and Rhea pre amps with mono EAR890 power amps that sounded fab but was constantly swapping valves, looking for valves or fiddling with something to a NAD M10, all I play with now is room correction, sit back and enjoy.
Now with that said, for some people, tweaking their system is their enjoyment. And that’s part of the hobby too. But for me, I find it detracts from my ultimate goal of enjoying the music and overcoming the stresses of life. Tweaking just adds more stress for me.