Roon vs Qobuz Connect

@rivinyl 

I realize I could manipulate the Roon settings to get a better output as detailed above, but wonder why should I have to go through all that effort.

Well, you know why. It’s because Roon has such a good UI, and it integrates your own music. (Plus us crazies love manipulating the hell out of our systems...) But as Mark @mgrif104 said, it’s frustrating to knock up against an irreducible penalty. I like your "analogue brain" hypothesis. One way of testing it is to use QC and Roon to play your local music. I haven’t tried that... it’s a good question.

My last message was incorrect: AFAIK there is no way to use QC on local files. Maybe one can test Roon on a local file versus the same file streamed directly from the Qobuz server via Roon.

Maybe one can test Roon on a local file versus the same file streamed directly from the Qobuz server via Roon

I’ve done that before, with both ripped CD files and purchased hi-res files. I don’t hear much – if any at all – difference between them. In Roon I used fixed volume and disable all the DSP features, for minimal processing of the stream before it hits my DAC.

Roon Labs Community is the Roon forum and it’s very good with Roon employees in the mix. Like this!
 

@wsrrsw fun conversation -- and will continue to follow --- but apart from a couple of posts that corroborate the same points here, not much (on that particular thread I mean). Too many people already vested in Roon.  Plus Paul McGowan at PSAudio seems to be a polarizing force! :-)