What makes One Music Server Sound Better than Another?

@mitch2 the best streamer you can hear today is the Taiko Extreme, soon to be outclassed by the latest offerings. This is out of my price range and your stated range. What they have done to build this "streamer" should be the foundation of what you’re looking for. Power is the number one consideration. I won’t go into the other factors too much.

I’ve been building my own music servers for many years, having followed discoveries that have led to what Taiko is doing. I’ve built my own server as close to the Extreme as possible as well as built similar sounding servers. Each server or streamer will have its own sound profile. What I have targeted is what many look for; clarity with a black background, an expansive but accurate sounds stage and as close to a real life or analog listening experience as possible. There are other characteristics but these I’ve found are critical. The main goal is to reduce noise introduced by components.

In your search, if able, evaluate power and timing attention in the forms of latency and other digital impacts like jitter. The other critical factor I’ve found is upsampling ability. Upsampling in addition to being able to play high resolution sources is a significant factor in sound quality. My DAC can process DSD1024 native and PCM 1.536MHz so I upsample to those frequencies and I absolutely hear a difference. My DAC has NOS capability so I do that from my server/streamer. This means I have better control over the variety of available filters.

@rbstehno 

"I have my server in another room and it sounds superior to using usb."

Exactly.  The server, modem, router, etc. are in my network room and the streamer and DAC are in a separate room with my audio system.  The streamer connects to the router by 45 feet of fiber and USB connects the streamer to the DAC. 

The perception of better is directly correlated to the level of vices used and the time of day!  In other words after a couple of beverages/pokes and when the sun goes down, everything sounds better!

Well I’ll be darned, Roon’s basic software changes the sound without using any fancy filters or DSP. I guess that other guy was right.

Live and learn.

mapman

21,624 posts

01-26-2024 at 03:38pm 

@mitch2 thanks for that info.

So given all that, my bet is any difference in sound is due mainly to differences in the roon server implementations.

OP: I don’t know exactly how those two different servers run Roon - it’s possible they’re adding some DSP or otherwise doing non--Roon-standard manipulations. But if not - same Roon version, same configuration, across a network, bit perfect is bit perfect. Doesn’t matter the server source.

For clarity, my post is not about hooking a DAC up to a server directly, where at least there is a form of direct electrical connection. It’s about server streaming to endpoint over a network.

If some of the posters’ suggestions here were true, when you go to an ATM to withdraw cash sometimes you get a few dollars less and sometimes a few dollars more. When you check your bank account online the numbers will be different every time. When you email someone, the network will introduce typos. When you send a word document, text will change.

IP network transmission simply does not work that way. As long as you have bit perfect music input at the server end you’re going to have the same bit perfect output, no matter what else is at the server end, at the streaming end. [Admit the distant possibility of streamers sounding different].

If you want to explore this, I suggest you take a computer and use that as a Roon server to your same endpoint and do those comparisons. As long as you’re not hearing dropouts, and each is configured for identical DSP, volume, etc., whatever processing you have configured is identical (and there’s sufficient horsepower!), it’s gonna sound the same. I have 3 roon servers here on different platforms for different reasons, but it’s not SQ.