I recently installed Audirvana on my Win 10 Pro PC (also has Roon) to test the SQ differences. Through my headphones I can clearly hear that Audirvana is superior to Roon. The difference I am hearing is more than the difference I heard when comparing Tidal to Qobuz (Qobuz sounds better; cleaner more incisive, more 'direct' sound);
Comparing Roon to Audirvana; There is more dynamic contrast with Audirvana; Roon sounds flatter and less engaging when doing back and forth using same tracks; With Aud, vocals have more "vibrancy" and focus; overall sound has more life to it; If I didn't do the back and forth I would not have believed this. I am not really happy about this because I have pretty much gotten used to Roon and love the integration.
My DAC is an Exogal Comet Plus; I have selected the ASIO protocol because it was the only one that was available to the XMOS USB 2.0 ST 301C driver that Exogal uses;
Roon also uses ASIO protocol, as I can see it in the Signal Path map;
My tests involved local DSD files and streaming from 24-bit Qobuz files. I have not tested Tidal for differences yet;
On the one hand, yay for finding a sonic improvement but quite frustrating, because it seems there is no end to getting the 100% best possible sound from a PC. Assuming both applications handle the memory to USB protocol the same, what else could cause this?
Comparing Roon to Audirvana; There is more dynamic contrast with Audirvana; Roon sounds flatter and less engaging when doing back and forth using same tracks; With Aud, vocals have more "vibrancy" and focus; overall sound has more life to it; If I didn't do the back and forth I would not have believed this. I am not really happy about this because I have pretty much gotten used to Roon and love the integration.
My DAC is an Exogal Comet Plus; I have selected the ASIO protocol because it was the only one that was available to the XMOS USB 2.0 ST 301C driver that Exogal uses;
Roon also uses ASIO protocol, as I can see it in the Signal Path map;
My tests involved local DSD files and streaming from 24-bit Qobuz files. I have not tested Tidal for differences yet;
On the one hand, yay for finding a sonic improvement but quite frustrating, because it seems there is no end to getting the 100% best possible sound from a PC. Assuming both applications handle the memory to USB protocol the same, what else could cause this?