1. Home
  2. digital
  3. 198910-90040

Roon changes the music

... at least on Qobuz on my system.

Listening with an audio buddy who has a very critical ear to both Roon and Qobuz Connect. We agreed that quick AB comparisons of the same song with matched levels per the iPhone DBx app and no DSP, volume leveling etc., yielded a difference. As some of the listeners in this thread (https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/does-roon-sound-different?highlight=Does%2Broon%2Bcolor%2Bthe%2Bmusic) found, "ROON has a certain "house sound" that blurs contours and softens treble." and "Roon is a bit softer in the upper midrange and images do not stand out in such relief as jplay". It was not subtle. Need to listen more to see if it’s an improvement or a step back. Too early to tell but there is certainly a difference.

Since I have been struggling with Qobuz connectivity, I am again considering going to Tidal, which is no biggie, but now I am also concerned that I may have to give up Roon. That would suck because I really like the Roon UI and the fact that all my music is organized there.

tcutter
goleksiak
81 posts
 

I just A/B tested Roon against Qobuz Connect and I definitely preferred QC. Interesting...

jaytor's avatar
jaytor
779 posts
 

This has been mentioned a number of times in other threads before - Roon is designed to have separate devices for the server and endpoint. I have found that using a streamer separate from the server does improve the sound quality. But what made a bigger difference was using a DDC that buffers the data from the streamer and delivers it to the DAC over a synchronous interface. 

As I understand it, Roon sends the data in fairly large packets and unpacking these packets in the DAC requires additional processing power which can adversely affect sounded quality. Handling this process before the data is delivered to the DAC seems to help. 

I can hear no difference between Qobuz through Roon and using Qobuz connect on my system. 

yyzsantabarbara
5,575 posts
 

I dropped Qobuz last week after many years of using both Tidal and Qobuz. I like Tidal more for discovery and I do not bother with minor differences between the 2 streaming services. I was an early adopter of ROON ($450) a decade ago and love it for ease of use, features, and sound.

One thing that does make a difference is the physical disks over streaming. I have very good Sonore OpticalRendu fibre optic streaming, but physical disk playback is a better (more sonically dense sounding), especially SACDs.

There is an upgraded version of my fibre  optic streamer that I will get one day and that should close the gap a bit with my disks. 

 

ajrepete
4 posts
 

I've been using Roon for about a month now.  Server on my Mac Studio and using my Innuos Zen Mk3 as an endpoint.  Stream with Qobuz.  I was definitely concerned about an effect on SQ.  After listening back and forth for an hour, I could not detect any difference.  I don't doubt others do hear a difference, just reporting my experience.

nymarty
127 posts
 

One thing to look out for in Roon are your settings.  Turn off volume leveling, if it’s on. I have also heard Roon sound compressed but only when leveling was enabled.  Also make sure you’re using fixed volume, particularly if you’re not doing any upsampling.  If you’re connecting your computer directly to your DAC, try a DDC in between. Or better yet, get a separate streamer so that Roon is running as a server and the streamer as a transport.  Then connect the streamer to your DAC with the best connection for your particular DAC.

I don’t doubt that people hear differences in software or hardware being used but make sure to remove some of the settings differences as variables.

More to discover