Roon changes the music

@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.

@tcutter 

That would suck because I really like the Roon UI and the fact that all my music is organized there.

There is a solution, it is Jplay

https://jplay.app/

@mapman 

I think Roon sounds wonderful. Go figure!

It does, until you hear something better.

Or, you buy a Taiko- those users claim there is no degradation using Roon. If someone can tell me what that server/streamer does differently than my Antipodes K50 in order to make Roon sound better I would appreciate it. 

@audiopacer 

Don’t believe the Roon forum bots. They will try to convince you that you are wrong- it can’t be Roon… and you are only imagining it. They are the digital equivalent of the ASR hardware “measurements above all else” weenies. 

Yup. been there done that. I respond to someone else’s thread to confirm I hear the same thing, they jump all over you, claim you didn’t level to the 1/100th of a db, I tell them Roon could be 2 db higher and I still say other software sounds better, they say there must be something wrong with my system. I question their unscientific reasoning, they then called me the troll! 

@yyzsantabarbara I prefer Tidal as well. To me, in most cases, it sounds better than Qobuz. 

Since I have a new toy in AI and want to play with it, it gave the following caveat which may also explain different experiences:

if Qobuz Connect ultimately proves preferable to you, it doesn't necessarily mean Roon is "doing something wrong." It may simply mean that the Nagra's own streaming implementation is optimized to work most naturally with its native control path. That's a perfectly plausible outcome and one that's specific to your combination of hardware, software, and listening preferences—not necessarily a universal verdict on either platform.