I have to say it’s great witnessing, for once, the unfounded and/or incorrect claims being countered successfully. It really makes me happy seeing the belief-based discourse being thoroughly rebuked. Thank you.
Ok for 90 second songs I guess
Robert - generally not a good idea to announce that the Earth is round. The flat Earthers love jumping up and down on your head 
Don’t let your wife get curly hair at their favorite hair stylist. I now experience a lot of drop-outs and the Stage image is a kind of fuzzy.
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Yikes, what happened to this thread, I wanted to discuss up-sampling, DSP, VST support etc. 
Unless there’s an audiophile USB cable VST plugin, could such a thing as what you were trying to talk about really bring a quality improvement ? 
In my opinion Roon is primarily a music library management tool, and future development should be focused on perfecting the task of organizing and presenting the music in ways that make sense to as many users as possible, whether jazz buffs, classical lovers, etc., and giving them the ability to play the music when and where they choose with the most user friendly interface possible. If the user’s hardware is capable of presenting the right bits at the right time to the DAC–Anybob’s recommendations for achieving that result are good ones–and Roon has the ability not to interfere with the process, it is doing its job as far as sound quality goes. If some users choose to employ DSP algorithms for room correction, etc. Roon should accommodate that choice, or at least not interfere with it, to the degree practical. Similarly, if convenience to some users means using bit imperfect volume control or volume leveling, it’s proper to accommodate that choice, as long as there is a clear option to a bit perfect signal path.
My view of “bad sounding” bit perfect library management software is similar to that of “bad sounding” Ethernet cables or AC power line cords. If someone can demonstrate an ability to distinguish aurally between Roon and another library management program like JRiver, both set to deliver bit perfect signals (hence, by definition, level matched) to the same DAC under double-blind listening conditions to a degree that’s consistent and statistically significant, I might consider that Roon’s sound quality needs improvement. Otherwise, I’m not going to worry my head over it.
In general, my attitude toward audiophile items like boutique digital interconnects is, if I don’t hear it I don’t worry about it, end of story. I am not troubled by whether my failure to hear something is due to my physics and engineering trained bias. If I don’t hear it I don’t worry about it (particularly when making it “right” involves spending thousands of extra dollars, or pestering software developers into fixing what may be an imagined problem). Incidentally I’ve been successfully tuning keyboard instruments for many decades so I’m not particularly concerned with whether my hearing is up to snuff. In my admittedly limited experience comparing CD rips through Roon using my Oppo UDP205 as a Roon endpoint versus playing the same disk on the Oppo I don’t notice significant differences, therefore I’m skeptical of those who would claim the differences are glaringly obvious. Theoretically a well buffered stream is capable of sounding better than one off a live disk due to jitter, but in practice, I don’t think this is very significant. Most quality DACs or all in one players have more than enough buffering to correct nanosecond time discrepancies and line them up with a stable clock. Makers of good quality players have long been aware of and have been practicing techniques for keeping the servos that enable the laser to track the disk as isolated as possible from the signal path.
So bottom line is, please focus on the Roon user experience. If some users claim there are audible problems with the bit perfect path the burden of proof should be on them.
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I once had a can opener trained cat who could hear the tiniest click made by one from two rooms away. It showed what the superior feline senses are attuned to: hunting and gathering. Not frivolous things like voicing violins or keyboard instruments, or tweaking Ethernet cables.
How dare you 
Okay so I reread the parts of the Roon Knowledge Base that have to do with sound quality and here’s what I found.
The Knowledge Base (KB) uses “sound quality” and “playback quality” interchangeably and these two things are not the same. A weak wifi signal feeding a wifi Roon endpoint may result in poor quality playback - lots of dropouts and other kinds of distortion unrelated to sound quality, as the term sound quality is being used in this thread.
The KB clearly warns against several things that could lead to poor sound quality, e.g. noise in the signal, and poor playback quality, again noise and other kinds of distortion. However it does not claim that a Nucleus will sound better than Roon running on a properly speced and set up computer with a good network.
I have a very large library of local flac files (almost 800,000 tracks) of all different bit and sample rates which is running on a completely over speced Windows 10 computer (i7-7700 CPU @ 4.20GHz, 32 GB RAM, NVMe solid state boot drive, 11GB dedicated GPU memory, USB hard drives for music files). Most of my Roon endpoints are connected via Ethernet but I have a few which use WiFi.
The only endpoints, even a Roon Ready one, which occasionally give me trouble are the WiFi ones and only in the form of dropouts and other kinds of distortion unrelated to sound quality but definitely related playback quality due to poor network performance. When I resolve the network issues the playback quality returns to normal.
I hope this clears up a few things.
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Glad I’m not hung up about ‘sound quality’ in software and upsampling/oversampling. Roon has been great for me, but if I want to improve sound quality I look at speakers, the room and perhaps my amplifiers. IME expensive digital never seems worth the money, relatively speaking, although I did enjoy owning dCS and feeling like I owned the best gear at the time.
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As far as I understand…
ROCK OS and NUCLEUS OS are different OS’s from a common base. The differences mainly concern the addition of Control4 integration into the Nucleus OS, and, thermal monitoring for the fanless environment.
Thermal monitoring throttles the Nucleus’ CPU to keep it within the optimum range for fanless cooling. This prevent instances of shutdown due to overheating and may prolong the life/health of the CPU. Or can implement a clean shut-down if the environment requires it.
Agree completely, but one hardly ever sees any discussion about those components.
I guess because this is first and foremost a forum for software and the digital equipment needed to engage it.
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That makes sense, for sure. It’s just that Roon is crazy good at writing optimized software (like me :-), so I’m sure the reason the Nucleus sounds better to me has a lot to do with that; although, I have never worked for Roon.
I’m sorry, @Magnus, for being part of the derailment. In all fairness, though, any discussion about sound quality differences is destined to derail. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten crazy nasty…
I wish I knew Roon’s customer base better, but I suspect that they will always have at least half an eye on SQ. Those of us complaining of a veiling from the DSP (including me) can probably safely expect any improvements in such technology to eventually make their way to Roon.
I think there are confounding factors in considering the SQ options/features of Roon or the equipment that hosts it that outweigh Roon’s role in the overall sound quality. I believe one can make improvements in room acoustics and speaker/listener placement to a very long extent before changes in Roon’s SQ options/features will begin to compete (including Roon’s room correction features). But most of us don’t go down that path very far at all. Even me, despite my deep convictions about and experiences of it.
It’s an odd disconnect to obsess over such things like linear power supplies, operating system simplicity, and, yes, Roon’s SQ features, while dismissing acoustic treatment as beyond reach. It might be bad faith for me to point this out, having a very accommodating spouse, but, come on fellas!, you can bargain your way into some bass traps. Maybe she drives a nicer car than you, in exchange for some quadratic residue diffusors? Guilt is the currency of love, my friends, and you know your significant other is gonna mess up sooner or later!
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I have over 2 cubic meter of stone wool in my 4x4 meter room, so while the “improve acoustics first” arguments are valid in many cases, in my case I have been there and done that. But as you said, its better to fix the big issues (like room acoustics) before starting with things like experimenting with up-sampling or DSP.
But once you have good speakers and electronics, clean power, good enough cables, good room acoustics, well placed speakers and a well chosen listening spot, then the next step is to tweak those last % through DSP, up-sampling, testing digital cables, different Roon servers and endpoints, etc. And yes, Roon server does matter even with a good endpoint (unless you use fiber-ethernet, in which case I for one can’t hear any difference).
Ouch. That’s a tough room. If the option was available, I would consider adding a wall to diminish one of those 4 meter dimensions. Framing is easy. Drywall is not easy. If you wanted to go crazy, you could fill the space between the new wall and the old wall with insulation. Or!!! You could turn that space into a narrow equipment closet, so that your listening space has that minimalist look! If we’re talking about your living room, ouch.
Also, I’ll be replacing my two John Risch bass traps in the next year or two. If you’re not too far from the Denver, CO, USA area, I’d be happy to give them to you.
Not all of us have options or the will to change the room for hifi listening. My listening room is a family room and foremost a home, not a recording studio. So speaker placement has to consider this and most treatments are out. The rest of my home needs upkeep not dressing a room for my little hobby. If you have the money, a spare room for your own indulgence than fair enough but for the most of us normal folks that’s not an option. So DSP is essential.
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I’ve been very satisfied with the sound of Roon since day one, and I don’t feel that my system lags behind systems costing tens of thousands more. Room allows me to enjoy my massive music library, and it doesn’t anything that I am feeling insecure about.
No, that wasn’t my premise at all. In fact, if people claim they can reliably remember what Roon 1.6 used to sound like on the same Core Machine they now use for 1.7., they are NOT trying to “step in the same river twice”. They’re actually trying to step into two different rivers at the same time, although one of them is no longer there at all. This fundamental difference can hardly be dismissed as superfluous hairsplitting…
I’ve never been a huge fan of rapid A/B-ing… But if people want to do an A/B comparison, it certainly doesn’t help if they can no longer listen to A, because they don’t have it anymore…
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