Thread: Roon: Is there sound difference between different linux distros

These days I get my hand on a few intel nucs, with the idea to install my roon core on that nuc. Got 1 i3 5th generation and 2 i5s 6th generation. As roon endpoint I use a sonore ultrarendu together with a USB2 dac.

The reason for doing was an easy one, it was not about improving the sound quality, but having a machine that boots really fast, does not consume many energy and is a silent solution.

The first idea was to install roon rock on one of these nucs. This distro is designed for what it must do: run as a roon core.

Then I was thinking: Why not use a normal consumer linux distro, like linux mint, ubuntu, fedora. My normal pc is almost 10 years old does have linux why not replace it by a small silent one.

looking further for smaller linux distro’s that will speed up te boost, I found something spectacular: there are people stating that there are better sounding linux distros, then the recommended roon rock or nucleus.

Which distros to think about?

- audiolinux AudioLinux - The audiophile realtime plug & play operative system
according to the website: What about the sound? Clean, transparent, the last veil is removed... and a quick and complete support that no one is giving in Linux. Your system will be fine-tuned for the absolute best performance.

- Euphony 403 Forbidden
- maybe there are more solutions

For me installing these cost alot of time to install and moreover the licence are not free for only a try

Are there people who compared the sound quality between different linux distros?

I always care about improving the sound quality. Would be awesome for further improvements. But first make a working roon rock, starting with the NUC6. To be continued...

I have indeed played with both AudioLinux, Euphony, Rock and many other distros - archlinux, ubuntu, etc. I would suggest you give Euphony a try - they have 30 days free trial with 100% features enabled.

Euphony's UI is simple and easy to navigate. Off coarse it's not as sophisticated as Roon but they are adding features slowly without compromising the sound quality. I have exchanges with the developer (Željko Vranić) asking for new features and bug fixes and they have been very helpful. Response is very fast. It has the capability to remotely login to your Euphony installation and debug the problem in case its needed.

There is a Euphony smartphone app as well as web browser driven. I use MBP for the remote/UI and hence a web browser just works fine.

An upgrade on my nucs. I had a mayor problem with these, 3 nucs in the house and all of these didn't give HDMI output on my computer screen and tv. What is it hard to install anything when the screen is black...
An old tv from my passed away grandma did give output: What a great idea to store that tv for 5 years

Got something on the display, installed Roon Rock and it works. And wow: it starts up in a few seconds. Roon Rock is amazing, exactly what I was looking for.

So 2 nucs left, time to install Euphony and compare if there is diffence in sound quality.

To be continued...

I did try now 3 systems:

on NUCs: euphony,Roon Rock
on my PC: linux Ubuntu

I did not hear any sound difference between these 3. But from all these 3, there is a clear winner: Roon Rock, due to the fast boot time

Euphony is designed to work directly with the DAC, especially with their Stylus player but you must carefully choose the server and their power sypply. In my single server system running Euphony, the sound degraded by a big margin with any streamer (like UltraRendu, Sotm, NUC) in between. However, in a server/streamer setup, the type of server s/w also has an impact, not as big as when the server is connected directly but it still does.