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.
@audphile1 are you going to be buying a separate streamer? I think I remember that you just used a dac with a network card? So you had to use roon? |
@dman777 no. I had aurender n200 that I sold when I got my Meitner MA3i. Preferred Meitner built in streamer. I compared it with Roon and Aurender Conductor, as well as Qobuz Connect. My days of using an expensive outboard streamer are over at least for time being. They bring nothing to the table at least when comparing to Meitner, sound quality wise. UI is better with Roon and jplay as well. I had my Roon Nucleus One off for a week and I was using jplay. I powered it back on earlier and it sounds fine. However, I know this won’t last. The solution is to power it down after each listening session. I can live with that especially when I also have jplay that I can use when Roon poops. |
There’s no denying Roon is an attractive UI and a decent organizer, possibly the best but if I am going to impose Roon’s DSP engine and RAAT pipeline on my X1, I might as well use a cheaper streaming system. It’s a compromise too far. I trialled it, I liked a few things, but when compared to my native use of the X1 there was a noticeable detrimental effect. To a lesser degree Tidal does and to me Quobuz has the least detrimental effect of the non native applications I have used. Having accepted they all have flaws. I chose to use Tidal connect for casual listening and music discovery. However, when I really sit down to stream & listen to full albums in a quiet environment, the most immersive and engaging way is Lumin direct. It’s just more revealing, less veiled, more vivid, yet it retains a refinement which I like. IMHO these differences at least in Tidal and Quobuz are not night and day and I guess would be much less noticeable if the users system is not particularly revealing but I do believe they would still be easily detectable on most "decent" systems.
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