Roon changes the music

I always enjoy learning what different people hear.  I used Roon on a dedicated headless NUC, no DSP, no auto-leveling, and no other do-dads for close to 10 years.  I played it through a pretty good stereo system and really enjoyed the sound…a lot. The stereo was almost always playing at least in the background. The last Roon update wouldn’t run on my NUC ☹️, so it went to computer heaven.  I have Qobuz and Tidal, and I prefer Qobuz for sound quality.  I have since been using Qobuz Connect and Mosaic (I have a dCS dac), and neither is even close to the sound I got from Roon running on the NUC. The stereo sounds like a high quality radio now and is rarely on.  
 

I’ve since heard a demo of a really high end Innuos streamer which played Qobuz better than I’ve ever heard before!!  I’ve decided to get a good (but not the really high end one $$$!!!) Innuos and am waiting for it to arrive.  I a, really wanting my awesome stereo back.

@audphile1 

Thank you.

AI tells me that Bubble UPnP Server won’t make a significant difference to sound quality because it does very little beyond making jPlay compatible with Linn’s protocol. Basically, it is just changing a small bit of code. I don’t think I’ve got anything to lose by trying it out. The worst thing that can happen is it may not be as stable as UPnP and the Linn App. If I don’t like it, I can easily uninstall it and get back to where I am now.
 

Have you taken a view on jPlay yet? Does it have most of the functionality of Roon.

@newton_john jplay has a very nice UI. It’s similar to Roon but does not have every feature of Roon. Example of a few features I think would be nice to have -

1. When browsing artist/composer/band albums, the list is sorted by release year descending. Roon gives you an option to sort by popularity which how I would prefer to view it

2. Option to select albums in MQA format. I stream both Qobuz and Tidal. My DAC has full MQA capabilities and happens to sound amazing playing MQA. I think Jplay is a bit odd in this regard. For example Patricia Barber “Clique” album is available in MQA thru Roon. Jplay shows CD quality but plays track 1 as MQA and the rest is 44-16. Roon pulls the entire album in MQA.

3. A bit more info on format would be nice at album level 

However, as I said the interface is really nice and I am extremely happy with the sound quality. 

Marcin from jplay frequents the forums. He posted here https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/jplay-app/post?postid=2910160

Roon is a terrible company with the worst tech support model on the planet 

@phishhhhh4 

+ ∞

They alienate their customers and discourage loyalty.