Roon changes the music

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. 

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.

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.

Why not just buy a true streamer like a innuos with very low noise dedicated linear power supplies , i too used a computer between the filthy power inside to lack of much of any f filtering or power regulation . Buy a good innuos streamer 

dedicated linear power supplies , low noise regulators ,massive filter capacitance 

my innuos 3 also has a dedicated 2T  SS Hard Drive .

please remember your router brings in tons of noise  most are 4 amp 12 volt ,the wall wart is $5 garbage put a dedicated. LPS power supply,  and Ethernet hub for sure toss these $25 hubs added noise .LHY builds the best for under $700  and use at minimum pangea power cords, quality Ethernet cables , your last end point cable makes the most difference ,use best cable.

@nymarty 

Good advice and in place in my system.

@audioman58 

My Xfinity modem uses an iFi Elite for its PSU. My Nucleus+ and Nagra Streamer are powered by Tony Pardo PSUs and use AQ Vodka ethernet cables to connect to the modem. There are no other devices connected. The Nagra Streamer uses a proprietary fiberoptic cable to connect to the Playback Designs MPD-8. I do not think I can create a better signal path.

I agree that Roon sounds fantastic, but QC sounds different and at least with a brief listen, sounds better.