What should I be expecting from Roon, if I do it right, but I am need a kickstart!

Hi all,

How are ya’ll doing tonight. So I am a brand spanking new member in the Roon family. As usual almost like everyone else I am pretty excited too and willing to take the extra step of going big with the way you listen to music.
Currently I am in the trial phase, but will be upgrading to lifetime subscription. I have been reading around on this forum quite a bit and am excited and terrified at the same time like a little kid with a big bundle of books in his bag on the first day of their school.

Looking at the level’s the enthusiasts talk in details about the Art of Sound the players their knowledge is immaculate. And definitely gives me hope that I am at the right place and among friendly like minded people. Although my level of understanding is minuscule at an atomic value as compared to you.
So my please accept my humble request of helping me out while I start my new journey with Roon.

I really do not know where to begin except of the fact that I do feel proud after installing the software on my HTPC.
So I wont make this post very large, but here is a little bit of background of my assets in question and a very high level expectations I have setup for myself with my new found hobby.

I have a pretty decent home theater setup. The speakers I own is a 7.1 setup

Definitive Technology Mythos ST for the L/R
Definitive Technology CS8080HD - Center Channel
Definitive Technology Gem XL’s for Surround
Definitive Technology Pro Monitor 1000 for Rear Surrounds
Subwoofer is a DIY Horn, Tuba HT(THT)

All this is driven by a Denon 4311CI AVR, soon will be upgraded to Denon AVR-X6300H
Well frankly speaking the above gear is HT focused. However the speakers surrounds are considered very good for music as well.
Other than this, i have a very equipped server setup with a ESXi node and a couple of hosts with a 140 Terabyte Media Center.
Tons of Flac and SACD music. I’ve been using FooBar since years on my HTPC, and have been tuned to great extent.

So back to my request here with the community.
As i have installed Roon on my HTPC, its the most basic install. I am using the Wasabi Mixer for volume, have tried other options but dont see a difference.
So with Roon installation on a HTPC are there any audiophile grade advanced setup that you guys use in here?
Please guide me to a link that i can follow with this installation.
Any other plugin, dsp or player to install?

Soon once i get the hang of it, I would like to get a dedicated processor/dac or whatever is right with Roon. I am not sure whatever is considered as the holygrail end game setup with roon with external devices? What do you guys have or suggest?

I also see few folks have DIY’ed their processors/Dac (the add on gadget), is that worth it vs a branded option?

Well I know this post has been overflowing with assumptions, confusions, questions and blabber… please pardon my ignorance, and go easy on me.
I’d really like to get deeper into this, and make roon and the end game audio a part of my life.

Thanks for reading through.
Bless as always.

2 Likes

Welcome to Roon Forum. I m sure you will enjoy it here :slight_smile: .

I kept it simple and went with DIY -> http://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit
Kept it simple? In my mind DIY sound very complicated. I m way too nervous about DIY but it went so well, i m very happy with my own server. i7 based NUC with ROCK installed - “Absolute Appliance!”. Updates itself, works very very fast, nimble takes all DSP et al and works without one bit of noticing that it is running / working? or is it there ? Nothing. its there and it works, thats it, like a matrix movie :slight_smile: its there, and everywhere. Ha ha ha cant believe i wrote that :slight_smile: .

Music is sound, so getting the best from your playback system is of greatest importance IMHO.

For Music; Meridian Trifield gets the best from surround speakers, again IMHO. This requires a Meridian surround processor as your pre amp. There are many pure owned options for this if money is tight.

When the Music sounds great ROON/Tidal allows you to access it brilliantly leaving you enjoying more music than you ever have before.

Enjoy the ride

There is good information in the Roon Knowledge Base as well - for example, this article as a starting point.

Welcome! You’ll feel right at home! :slight_smile:

Your initial setup will surely show you what you can expect of Roon in your system, but things can always be optimized for different types of useage.

I see a couple of options open to you right at the start. One is to install Roon Server onto a Linux or Win VM machine in your ESXi environment. Some have even succeded in installing ROCK in a VM i think? (ROCK=Optimized Linux OS+Roon Server=appliance server)
What bothers me a bit is your library, 140Tb??? I thought i’d seen it all but obviously not :smiley:
My lib is about 3Tb and adds up to about 100K songs. If your lib is about the same as mine considering resolutions and filetypes you’re talking about 5 million songs?
If you seriously are considering letting Roon index that i’d go for the absolute top notch server you can imagine, an absolutely essential is solid state drives for the Roon Database and an absolute minimum is an i7 QUAD core CPU.

So, thats the server part, then you need to add a Control point, and any modern high rez tablet will do, chose your poison!

Getting the audio over to your HT setup is a wide choice, as any Raspberry Pi with a Digital out HAT will do the job nearly as good as a dCS Network Bridge at 25x the price. Just make sure your parts are connected over a stable and quick LAN. (Not the Control obviously as you most likely will want that one to be wireless)

Just one question,;
You are aware that Roon is music only and primarily focused on two channel music?
It does support multichannel though:

https://kb.roonlabs.com/Multichannel

This is not so. Roon fully supports multi-channel. It’s just that most of us have stereo material as the majority format in our collections…

Hi @Socrates,

Welcome ! I think we all remember starting off in Roon and the learning curve as we came to grips with it. One of the things I like about Roon is that it caters for all levels of interest in the hobby. From those who want to set and forget and just lose themselves in the music, through groomers who painstakingly curate their collections to tinkerers and DSP nerds who enjoy the finer points of API programming or digital filters. You can take as much from Roon as you choose.

As Geoff indicated, the Roon Knowledge Base is a great resource to browse through. The link he provided to the Sound Quality Page is a part of that.

Once you’ve got your gear set up, one of my favourite pastimes has been playing with the DSP Engine, and the Parametric Equaliser in particular.

I think the best “bang for buck” that many of us have made to our systems using Roon is to create room correction filters (in software such as Room EQ Wizard) and Import an impulse file for Roon to convolve. Combined with room treatments to deal with first reflections and bass nodes, people have reported positive results out of all proportion to the usual audiophile cost/benefit scale. I am one of them.