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Roon vs Qobuz Connect

Yes the title is misleading because Qobuz is a server and Roon is an aggregator. But this question is for all those who stream Qobuz via Roon, or via Qobuz Connect (QC).

There is little doubt that QC sounds significantly better than Roon streaming Qobuz. Admittedly a subjective opinion, but for all of those who agree:

The advantages of Roon in integrating personal and external sources are obvious. To counter this, I can run a small local server and access my personal collection via Qobuz. But the aggregation sucks overall. 

What can I do to have my QC cake and eat it too? I’d love to hear about any clever tweaks to imitate Roon’s capabilities, while keeping QC quality. 

debrajray
debrajray's avatar
debrajray OP
65 posts
 

Hi @glenmschneider are you using the preamp on the MU2 or bypassing to another preamp. If the former, then I am puzzled: isn’t "device volume" just controlling the analog volume control on the Grimm with no digital attenuation? OTOH with an external preamp I can see there would be a big difference and I would definitely choose fixed volume.  (BTW if you don’t use Tidal, turn all MQA settings off on Roon, made a difference for me though still an irritating tad below QC.)

glenmschneider
106 posts
 

@debrajray hi there. Yes I’m using the Grimm as a preamp. 
in none of the three scenarios to the best of my knowledge is there any digital attenuation of the signal. The fact that there were two different options to set the device to fixed output was really confusing at first and it’s still not clear to me the difference choosing device and fixed in roon. With device I can control the volume from within roon. With fixed I can control the volume from the Grimm web gui interface . With fixed in the gui interface I have no control of the volume; it is in fact fixed. I can’t use this setting since I don’t have an external preamp (now). There is clearly a difference between the Roon device and fixed options. Grimm recommends using device however all the forums I’ve looked at people seem to prefer fixed. Truly it sounds fantastic both ways; just different. Not sure if that clarified anything, it is confusing to me too.

debrajray's avatar
debrajray OP
65 posts
 

@glenmschneider The fact that you see a difference between the first two options is intriguing to me (let’s ignore the third as there is no external preamp). I am using a Moon 891 as my streamer-dac-preamp. I need to check this out; I simply assumed there would be no sq difference and opted for the ability to control (analog) volume through Roon. Another layer of mystery --- though I guess that the QC diff is not that mysterious --- just irritating because the Roon interface is super.

glenmschneider
106 posts
 

Maybe what I’m seeing is unique to Grimms implementation because control of the entire Grimm is largely via the roon interface.

the best I can offer is to give it a shot. I personally am loving roon and for me the SQ is fantastic with it in place. I did turn off all the optional processing as people above noted and it did make a noticeable difference.

 

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