On the future of Roon...

Swap the Roon Renderer module for a ProUSB/ProISL and go for an aurender and use conductor.

Failing that, an Innuos can run roon and give the option of using their proprietary software called SENSE (with the module swap).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Thanks for the suggestion Mike. Currently seeking approval for a digital director though. An N20, in black, will have to wait for now.
 
Whenever I see anything Apple related in a digital setup I cringe. First off I am not a fan of the company (really don't want me to go on my rant)... but most importantly when Apple gets their hands on your music it usually screws performance.

My buddy was using an apple as a server with a separate NAS for storage and he always complained about his digital. When I stayed with him for a few months prior to retirement and my move I got him to try switching to something else. He ended up choosing a Roon Nucleus, and with my constant urging he added internal storage to hold all of his files. He ended up going with two Lumins (two zones) since he really enjoys his local files and Qobuz. It sounded night and day better. I still prefer my dedicated purpose-built PC running HQPlayer and Roon Server... but that is another conversation all together.
 
Bones13 said:
Starting to look around again. Too many reports of better sound from other software. I have experienced the network issues with Roon. (It stays very busy on the network/internet). I currently run ROCK on an intel Nuc. And it works well.

Looking into another headless server that will ideally run Roon Core, and UPNP server. I plan to try out JplayIOS app, which does see my MSB Renderer V2. I’d also like to try Audirvana, but I need to look into that more. I listen to a combination of local files, and Qobuz. It would help if my Sonos units could read my music files on the server.
Click to expand...

I am a bit confused. You are concerned with reports of better sounding software, but when looking for a new headless server you want it to run Roon Core??? Roon Core is the Roon Server software... that is where the rubber meets the road so to speaker. That is the playback engine unless you then hand it off to something like HQPlayer which works with Roon Server. Roon control is the interface and meta data portion of the equation and has minimal if any actual effect on the sound performance. Weather you use JplayIOS (admittedly I am not familiar with this app) or Roon Controller or some other interface app, the performance will have minimal impact. It is the engine that is actually playing/serving the files, the music, not the controller interface portion.
 
Randy Myers said:
I am a bit confused. You are concerned with reports of better sounding software, but when looking for a new headless server you want it to run Roon Core??? Roon Core is the Roon Server software... that is where the rubber meets the road so to speaker. That is the playback engine unless you then hand it off to something like HQPlayer which works with Roon Server. Roon control is the interface and meta data portion of the equation and has minimal if any actual effect on the sound performance. Weather you use JplayIOS (admittedly I am not familiar with this app) or Roon Controller or some other interface app, the performance will have minimal impact. It is the engine that is actually playing/serving the files, the music, not the controller interface portion.
Click to expand...

No, I run ROCK OS (Roon Core only on a NUC - very similar to a Nucleus+) as my music server, as a server only, it is only connected to the ethernet. It only runs the Roon system, and I am considering another server software OS that would run the Roon Core, and a UPNP server (most of the more capable NAS devices will do this). I can re-install Windows11 on the NUC and do this, but have been asking if anyone knows an easy to use Linux build that would do this.

UPNP server would allow some of the other control points to access the same music library, and allow streaming across my network. I don't have control of the software on the MSB Renderer Streamer, so I have to work with stuff that will see, and use this as an output device.

I always have to be investigating something, and this is the current endeavor. Saving $ for the Digital Director, so not looking for hardware, hopefully just software trials for now, to run on my fanless NUC10 i5 machine (Akasa case with 2T SSD). If it goes somewhere, good, but I am not unhappy with my current setup. It's a tinkering thing. I gave up building diy amps, so I have been looking into other things. It's not hard to re-install ROCK if things don't change with a more complicated software / controller system. (Lifetime Roon from launch, so it will need to be a solid improvement)

We plan to move cross country at the end of this year, and I am concerned that the yet to be encountered Seattle house may not allow a large system, so trying not to grow too many boxes. Vinyl system/storage might be problematic. Therefore, I am concentrating on the digital segment currently.
 
For every Aurender user that claims that the Conductor App sounds better than Roon, there are MANY others that prefer Roon for the combination of sound, friendlier GUI, and unsurpassed capability for music library management.

Aurender once claimed that they did not work with Roon because Conductor sounded better and they were unwilling to degrade the sound. The reality is that Aurender products at that time were using AMD chips that were not powerful enough to work with Roon.

Aurender has now upgraded their products with more powerful Intel chips and, voila, Aurender now touts that their products are Roon-Ready.

How times change.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2024-01-16 at 10.43.00 AM.png
    Screenshot 2024-01-16 at 10.43.00 AM.png
    497.2 KB · Views: 207
Bones13 said:
No, I run ROCK OS (Roon Core only on a NUC - very similar to a Nucleus+) as my music server, as a server only, it is only connected to the ethernet. It only runs the Roon system, and I am considering another server software OS that would run the Roon Core, and a UPNP server (most of the more capable NAS devices will do this). I can re-install Windows11 on the NUC and do this, but have been asking if anyone knows an easy to use Linux build that would do this.

UPNP server would allow some of the other control points to access the same music library, and allow streaming across my network. I don't have control of the software on the MSB Renderer Streamer, so I have to work with stuff that will see, and use this as an output device.

I always have to be investigating something, and this is the current endeavor. Saving $ for the Digital Director, so not looking for hardware, hopefully just software trials for now, to run on my fanless NUC10 i5 machine (Akasa case with 2T SSD). If it goes somewhere, good, but I am not unhappy with my current setup. It's a tinkering thing. I gave up building diy amps, so I have been looking into other things. It's not hard to re-install ROCK if things don't change with a more complicated software / controller system. (Lifetime Roon from launch, so it will need to be a solid improvement)

We plan to move cross country at the end of this year, and I am concerned that the yet to be encountered Seattle house may not allow a large system, so trying not to grow too many boxes. Vinyl system/storage might be problematic. Therefore, I am concentrating on the digital segment currently.
Click to expand...

Ah, got ya. You are actually considering a change in operating system. I know some people claim that Linux sounds better because of less processes running then Windows. I am not a huge fan of open-source which has little to no protection. Being open-source people can insert whatever the heck they want to, as an example. I use Windows 11 and watching the resource usage, etc. I see very very minimal amounts of CPU, memory, disk usage, etc. I know some will dispute this, but the way I see it, if you have enough hardware behind the machine, good modern CPU, tons of fast high-end memory, SSD/M.2 drives, etc., then you will never be pushing the machine to a point where it can cause any issues whatsoever.

One problem I have noticed is many of these pre-built music servers, while concentrating on certain things tend to use very minimal if not completely outdated hardware. They are almost always using Linux (it is free, duh). The bottom line is they all claim that all the extra processes running in Windows interfers and effects the music. Sure it does if you are using that kind of low-end outdated hardware and software.

Many of the highest rated most expensive custom built music servers use Windows....

As an example, the machine I would buy if I had unlimited funds...Taiko Audio SGM Extreme! It is the crème-de-la-crème of music servers and uses the same basis that I do on my PC Server, they just take everything to the extreme :).
 
nicoff said:
For every Aurender user that claims that the Conductor App sounds better than Roon, there are MANY others that prefer Roon for the combination of sound, friendlier GUI, and unsurpassed capability for music library management.

Aurender once claimed that they did not work with Roon because Conductor sounded better and they were unwilling to degrade the sound. The reality is that Aurender products at that time were using AMD chips that were not powerful enough to work with Roon.

Aurender has now upgraded their products with more powerful Intel chips and, voila, Aurender now touts that their products are Roon-Ready.

How times change.
Click to expand...

When I had the N20 in for review, at the time, the Conductor app did sound better than using Roon. Same goes for using the Lumin app with my P1.

However, in my system, while I'd classify the difference as being "statistically significant" (if I had to put a "number" on it, I'd say both the Conductor and the Lumin app sound, ballpark, 15% better than Roon), I didn't find the difference to be "practically significant" (Def: practically significant: what matters...in the real world.)

The key point for me is: using one doesn't obviate the use of the other(s). While the Lumin app on my P1 clearly sounds better than Roon, I still use Roon a lot of the time as all the ripped content on Alita's hard drive is readily available using it, and it's easy to use.

Same applies for streaming content from Qobuz vs. the same file ripped from disc on on the music server hard drive. Yeah, the ripped file sound better, but Qobuz is still a wonderful way to discover music.

Basically, I've adopted Hans Beekhuizen's philosophy: "Enjoy the music."

Cheers.
 
nicoff said:
For every Aurender user that claims that the Conductor App sounds better than Roon, there are MANY others that prefer Roon for the combination of sound, friendlier GUI, and unsurpassed capability for music library management.

Aurender once claimed that they did not work with Roon because Conductor sounded better and they were unwilling to degrade the sound. The reality is that Aurender products at that time were using AMD chips that were not powerful enough to work with Roon.

Aurender has now upgraded their products with more powerful Intel chips and, voila, Aurender now touts that their products are Roon-Ready.

How times change.
Click to expand...

No, they still say (and conductor does) sound better and they gave people roon so they can hear it, on the fly, for themselves. And let’s keep in mind, some will give you ultimate sound for the amazing UI of roon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
nicoff said:
For every Aurender user that claims that the Conductor App sounds better than Roon, there are MANY others that prefer Roon for the combination of sound, friendlier GUI, and unsurpassed capability for music library management.

Aurender once claimed that they did not work with Roon because Conductor sounded better and they were unwilling to degrade the sound. The reality is that Aurender products at that time were using AMD chips that were not powerful enough to work with Roon.

Aurender has now upgraded their products with more powerful Intel chips and, voila, Aurender now touts that their products are Roon-Ready.

How times change.
Click to expand...

Cool. Can you please provide a link to that page that verifies Roon compatibility? I googled but couldn’t find it.
 
Check out the Roon Community board. I don’t have access to it now.
Or contact Mike and buy it from him. He is an Aurender dealer.
 
This go round, I think I will re-install Windows onto my NUC, and try running RoonCore, MinimServer, and perhaps Audirvana on the same server. (Trials at first), then do some testing. Roon, JPlayIOS, and Audirvana Remote, on the iPad.

If I can’t tell any difference using the same streamer endpoint, using the different streaming servers, I will stick with Roon, which still has the best (familiar) GUI and functionality. Runs well currently.

Again, just playing around. ROCK is stable, and bulletproof. Other than re-initialization of the database, very easy to re-install.
 
I feel it comes down to user priority. Like Mike mentioned some will forgo the increase in SQ to keep the function of Roon. I have friends who use Roon, one will keep it feeling the function outweighs any slight increase in SQ, another friend quit Roon and is using his Lightning app feeling the increase in SQ is worth it and he is alright with that app.

You get what I mean each will work through it and pick what feels best for them.
 
CPP said:
I wonder if that's where Roon calls them 'partners"
Click to expand...

Yes, but I don't see Aurender on that list. And there's nothing I could find on the Roon forums about Aurender officially adopting Roon, or anything close to the screenshot posted here.

Roon integration seems looming, but I was hoping to find the source of that screenshot posted by @nicoff.
 
DancingSea said:
Yes, but I don't see Aurender on that list. And there's nothing I could find on the Roon forums about Aurender officially adopting Roon, or anything close to the screenshot posted here.

Roon integration seems looming, but I was hoping to find the source of that screenshot posted by @nicoff.
Click to expand...


Mike here is a Aurender dealer, he might know
 
It’s coming. It’s been the worst kept secret in high end audio.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top