DSP allows the user to “shape” the signal according to the needs of their system.
There are 3 things that impact the sound going to your ears:
your content
your hardware
your listening environment (headphones, room, etc…)
All 3 can often be improved, and sometimes improving it using DSP is easier (or even possible) than improving the original item.
For example:
Think about the Audeze DSP presets. The Audeze LCD-4’s aren’t “broken”. They don’t need to be “fixed”. There are compensations that can be done in DSP which improve them because DSP is a different domain than physical headphone design. You can do things in DSP would be cost prohibitive in hardware design.
Nothing wrong with adding a bit more bass to your music than the crossover designer allowed for in your speakers
Got reflective flat walls? Room correction via convolution filters can help.
Changing the phase of your audio, or the mapping of your outputs sound to match your hardware can correct errors otherwise very difficult to resolve. I have one room with a speaker that is about a meter further from the listening sweet spot than the other speaker… easy to fix in DSP, hard to change my wall or my wife’s design for the layout of the room.
All can be advantageous as well, if used properly.
I have Kef LS50W and a subwoofer and… to my ears… in the room that I listen to them, they sound a little too forward in the midrange. I prefer the sound of a slightly scooped eq which I can apply via DSP without causing any phase issues.
I could be a purist and turn it off and go ‘bit-perfect’, but I’d enjoy the listening experience less.
I aim to do room measurement and get a convolution filter set up when I get time. Until then… a little tweak of the eq suits me fine.
I would say, all can be very beneficial if used correctly.
In my case, my room is 8 x 9 meters, with a ceiling sloping from 3 to 7 meters, and my system cost more than my first house, and room correction was still very valuable.
So let’s cut to the chase - RAAT is definitely superior to DLNA, technically, but so what? Finding an Ethernet-input, RAAT-compatible DAC is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for anything less than megabucks. Yes, you can cobble together some DIY kludge that works, but that is NOT an option for the majority of U.S. consumers. So the majority of us are stuck with DLNA despite having paid for RAAT along with our Roon subscriptions.
So until DAC makers begin to offer Ethernet inputs routinely, which may be years away if it ever happens at all, the consumer is stuck with buying a streamer AND a DAC to get a wired network endpoint. Even when DAC makers DO decide to offer Ethernet inputs, how many will offer RAAT as opposed to DLNA?
These “technical difficulties” may eventually be the difference between whether ROON itself is a commercial success or a failure. The jRiver juggernaut rolls on and even though its DLNA implementation is significantly inferior to Roon’s, the future of Ethernet audio itself lies in the balance.
Roon? The ball’s in your court to make RAAT implementation ubiquitous in Ethernet protocols, and also to persuade DAC makers to universally accept and implement Ethernet/RAAT inputs.
jRiver has a nasty habit of down-resolution-converting 44.1 content to MP3 over DLNA and WITHOUT TELLING YOU over DLNA. I’ve caught iTunes doing the same thing, if I remember right. Roon doesn’t that I can tell.
Why’s that? And why is it a “kludge”? And if one can’t find a kid in the family who’d be able to assemble the few parts of a Raspi + allo/iqaudio/hifiberry HAT + SD card + case set there’s the option to buy a bundle (at least allo does offer something there). Personally I don’t believe putting the required parts together is more complicated than “unboxing” a vacuum cleaner …
The Raspi way is - again in my opinion - the best way into audio streaming at a reasonable price point. Be it with RAAT or AirPlay or DNLA which you get all with the right software. And there are quite some opinions as well as measurements out there which state it’s not at all inferior to “megabucks” solutions.
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James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
34
I will just point out that your ipad, iphone, old laptop, and many other devices fit that description.
Ascending the curve of sound quality is a different point. But audio quality always has a cost component whether it involves Roon/RAAT or not.
Then this is a misconfiguration of JRiver. I can use JRiver to send bitperfect Hi-Res PCM or DSD to our Lumin players over network. The codec is also shown in the Lumin front panel, so a misconfiguration would be immediately obvious. I assume other similar products should also show the codec.
Yes - jRiver CAN be configured to stream hi-res all the time. But its default setting is NOT that way, and the majority of users probably never realize what’s being done to their music. Further, the VAST majority of users do not have devices that display what’s being received from jRiver and probably don’t realize that they’re listening to MP3 a significant portion of the time. Your assumption that similar products should also show the codec is incorrect.
And the previous paragraph brings up yet another issue with jRiver - I’ve changed settings in the program before that were subsequently totally ignored. Despite the setting “taking” and being accepted by the software, the result was that jRiver continued to act in the manner opposite of what had been selected in its settings. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back between me and jRiver.
That said, I still have friends who continue to use jRiver, and there’s no need for me to try to change their minds. If they’re satisfied with the program, then that’s all that matters. I’ll not use it again, though.
JRiver is a comprehensive package and that level of complexity comes a steep learning curve, but please don’t blame the software . It offers as full a set of features that anyone needs, a little time spent with the Options and the Wiki pays dividends
I have used it as my primary library manager and server, player for many years. If it does something I don’t like it’s because I didn’t set it right.
Roon is equally complex and unintuitive in some areas, witness this forum.
I have never had JRiver down scale my source accidentally or otherwise
I still actively use JRiver in parallel to Roon. Each has its own good and bad bits
