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Replacing Roon - What Should I get?

I'm tired of Roon having brain farts.  I have an original Roon Nucleus and have updated and augmented the Memory.  This helped for a bit.  But now, I keep having to reboot the darn thing.

It's not my network.  I have checked it out and everything in the house works fine.

Here is the setup.  A direct fiber optic link goes to the Router.  Then ethernet to Roon from the Router.  This way I get Roon to talk with the setup upstairs.  I have an 35 foot ethernet cable that runs through the walls directly from the router into my dCS Lina.

I want to replace the Roon.  I am thinking about an Innuos Stream.  Just need a streamer that can hold Roon/Tidal.  Don't need a DAC as the dCS does that quite well.  I have a SSD in the Nucleus that holds a ton of my music that I want to move over.

Thoughts on what to replace the Roon with?  Innuos (Stream) always get bandied about.  I hear about Arender as well. I don't want to get an updated Roon.

I also wonder about deleting and reinstalling the Roon App on my iPads.

Thanks in Advance

pgaulke60
audphile1's avatar
audphile1
7,944 posts
 

I’m finishing up a weeks long vinyl listening spree and getting back to digital. 
Discovering now that the last few Roon updates have 1) tremendously impacted the performance of the Roon Nucleus One core - everything is slower, more sluggish, and 2) downgraded the sonics, which is easily explained by the struggling hardware that isn’t able to cope with the OS and software updates. 
No issues with my network. This is purely a Roon problem. Looks like they deployed some inefficient code.

So I downloaded Jplay. It sounds excellent! Sonically supperior to Roon, Qobuz Connect and Tidal Connect. Need more time with it but so far it’s great. Not without glitches but at least sound is what it should be. 

erik_squires
17,549 posts
 

I wouldn't trust in-wall Ethernet unless I'd tested it or had visibility into the quality of the connection.  Some routers have this built in.  Otherwise get an inexpensive Ethernet tester like these. 

I personally punched down a number of cables in my data closet and made a lot of mistakes.  This resulted in degraded performance but not NO performance.  That is, Ethernet still appeared to work but at highly reduced speeds.  

passthedutchie
50 posts
 

Roon has been dogshit for the last couple of weeks. It constantly hangs or reloads. My Roon screens (iMac, MacBook Air M4, MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max) often don't see my Roon ROCK, or only intermittently, or won't connect to it. Endless restarts of my screens, the router, the modem, the ROCK...and it solves nothing. Then I leave it alone for a day, come back the next, and everything works fine. Until the next round of trouble, which arrives soon enough. The last 48 hours have been fine but who knows how long the joy will last.

P.S. My network is fine, no issues with anything else.

dsnyder0cnn
83 posts
 

Hey @pgaulke60,

I feel your pain with the constant dropping of the Core and endpoints, and seeing that swimming jellyfish every time you try to choose music. Before you completely jump ship, though, I strongly suggest looking at your Core hardware.

The original Nucleus was a great machine, but it is nearly a decade old now. The reality is that recent Roon software updates require more processing power. Your network is likely fine; it's the legacy hardware inside that Nucleus that is choking and causing the freezing and dropouts.

Moving away from Roon entirely is going to be a substantial downgrade in your overall experience and metadata presentation. Roon provides a rich, interconnected metadata overlay. It's like putting on a pair of augmented reality glasses: without them, you see a barren wasteland, but with them, you see a majestic forest. The music is the same, but your perception of it is augmented to be much more beautiful and engaging.

If you upgrade your Core to a modern machine with enough resources to handle the size of your library, Roon becomes rock solid and responsive again.

When it comes to getting truly state-of-the-art sound quality from Roon, there are basically two main approaches:

  • A high-end streaming transport: Something like the Grimm Audio MU2 (which runs about 17,750€).

  • An architecturally superior design: Utilizing the Diretta protocol (Signalyst's NAA is sort of close, but there's not really anything exactly like Diretta).

Both paths are equally successful at achieving state-of-the-art sound quality from Roon. Cosmetics, cost, and pride of ownership are the only real differences.

Getting these digital streaming chains optimized is a bit of a passion of mine. If you're open to it, I'd be more than happy to jump on a Zoom or screen sharing call with you to look at your setup and help you troubleshoot. Or, if you happen to be around the Phoenix metro area in Arizona, I'd gladly give you a hand in person. I'd hate to see you abandon the platform when a hardware refresh would likely solve everything.

if you happen to be attending AXPONA in Schaumburg, IL this April, I'll actually be presenting a seminar specifically on Diretta and digital audio enhancements on Sunday the 12th at 1:00 pm. I'd be happy to chat with you there.

https://axpona.com/schedule/?uww_sessid=c0aa6621-01fd-4b34-a8ab-d1c3c61785b0

rsf507
2,577 posts
 

Each time I look for JPlay in the app store it shows me an app by JEJE. Can someone post a link to JPlay? 

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