Bit confused about Roon

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paleo12

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Hi,

I have tried a Roon Nucleus plugged directly into a Dac, but did not like the sound quality though I liked the interface a lot. I will buy a Roon ready streamer in the near future and I am a little confused about which device does what. Both the Nucleus and the streamer will be connected to the LAN, and the Roon app will enable me to find albums on Qobuz. Is the role of the Nucleus purely "organisational" as it were, and does the music flow from the internet directly to the streamer, or does it pass through the Nucleus first and then to the streamer?

No doubt a rather basic question, but I am not very computer savvy.

Many thanks,

Paleo.
 
The Roon preferred and recommended method is over the RAAT (Roon advanced audio transport) which is Ethernet or WiFi. Core to DAC as you have tried is not the preferred way.

Simply stated, Your Roon core is the brains behind the operation and your Roon compatible streamer is the receiving end point to feed the DAC with the music.

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/raat
 
Thanks for that; I'll definitely set it up that way. Also read the informative link.
 
Connecting the Core device directly to the DAC is definitely one suggested method.
"It enables you to play your Roon music to:
* Roon Ready hardware devices
* Audio outputs, sound cards, and USB DACs connected to the Core."

The Core is the brains and controls what is being played, weather it comes from internal storage (best), a NAS, or streaming. Since all my music is stored on my server machine I do in fact connect it directly to my DAC and it sounds amazing. However if I choose to stream I could also control it from Roon through this setup...
 
Randy Myers said:
Connecting the Core device directly to the DAC is definitely one suggested method.
"It enables you to play your Roon music to:
* Roon Ready hardware devices
* Audio outputs, sound cards, and USB DACs connected to the Core."

The Core is the brains and controls what is being played, weather it comes from internal storage (best), a NAS, or streaming. Since all my music is stored on my server machine I do in fact connect it directly to my DAC and it sounds amazing. However if I choose to stream I could also control it from Roon through this setup...
Click to expand...

Join the Roon Facebook community and ask the same question there. There have been hundreds of these questions posted and thousands of experiments done. In the end, do whatever you feel sounds best to you. :snicker:
 
I have two houses and two complete Roon setups in each house.

One is the preferred setup where Roon Core is running on a dedicated small computer called a Nucleus (NUC). I have separate dedicated end points (streamers) that use Roon Advanced Audio Transport (RAAT) software to turn network bits into USB bits my DAC can digest. I have all my files on a server.

The other system is just my SurfacePro3 which runs Roon Core and RAAT and serves the USB bits out to my DAC. In this case all my music lives on USB hard drives.

They both sound fantastic.

I haven’t tried to directly compare the two.

One reason computers and laptops are not ideal is they make a lot of electrical noise. In each case I have taken steps to isolate this noise to good effect.
 
Thanks, I did connect the Roon Nucleus to my USB DAC. I found that in my system it did not sound very good to me.
 
Thanks. My plan at the moment is to get a streamer of the same make as the DAC/CD player (Esoteric) and a NUC to act as the Roon Core with an internal SSD to store the music. I found that in my system, the Roon Nucleus plugged directly into the DAC sounded a bit lifeless to me. Different ear, different rooms, different systems...

This would be similar to the first system you describe. I was wondering what the "flow" of the music is: as the streamer is connected to the internet as is the NUC, does the stream of music enter the streamer, or does it enter the NUC which sends it over the LAN to the streamer. If the latter, would it also work if the streamer is not connected to the internet?

I am trying to deepen my understanding of the process a little bit without going wildly techie about it.
 
Tidal / Qobuz music goes through the Roon Core, then over the LAN to the Roon Ready streamer (via RAAT protocol).

You have to have internet to use Roon even if you don't play music from internet, because Roon does internet license check.

If you do not want to internet-enable your streamer network, I do not recommend using Roon.

If you already have an Esoteric player, tell me the model and I'll check the compatibility for you.
 
Hi,

Thanks, that's very useful. If the Qobuz music goes through the Core to the streamer, does the streamer itself need to be connected to the internet?

The streamer will be an Esoteric N03T, which I believe is Roon ready.
 
paleo12 said:
Hi,

Thanks, that's very useful. If the Qobuz music goes through the Core to the streamer, does the streamer itself need to be connected to the internet?

The streamer will be an Esoteric N03T, which I believe is Roon ready.
Click to expand...

Connected to your home network is required, not the internet. The server is usually connected to the internet. If only playing local files, the server would not need to be connected to the internet.

Excluding internet, from the streamer, is possible, but tricky. Many streamers, including the Roon based ones, will want to be updated regularly via internet connection.
 
To call a setup which utilizes an streamer and an endpoint "preferred" is a misnomer to me. I have had many setups and the ones which have sounded best are the ones in which my DAC was connected directly to my server, not to an endpoint.

I am not saying that in certain setups using an endpoint won't result in the best sound. It is all system and equipment dependent. With an endpoint you are adding another "computer" which has its own power supply. In addition, you are potentially subjecting the data stream from the Core to other internet traffic.
 
paleo12 said:
If the Qobuz music goes through the Core to the streamer, does the streamer itself need to be connected to the internet?

The streamer will be an Esoteric N03T, which I believe is Roon ready.
Click to expand...

You need to have a WiFi router with the internet connected to the WAN port. Both the Roon computer and the streamer need to be connected to the LAN ports. You also need an iPad to run the app for the Esoteric or Lumin streamer. All can access the Internet this way.

If you really want to block the streamer from internet access, you can do MAC address filtering or setup firewall at the router, but I highly recommend you do not do these.

Please tell me the Esoteric DAC model you use.

For the SQ benefit of using a dedicated audiophile streamer, see Rule 1 of this article by Roon Labs:
https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/sound-quality
 
Hi, Thanks, that was another very useful link. Once I have the gear, it'll be a bit of a project to set it up I think.

I will be using an Esoteric K03XD and a N03T as a streamer, connected by USB. It will be interesting to see if there will be a difference to sound quality using Roon or using the Esoteric app to control the streamer directly.
 
If you want to use the Esoteric or Lumin app for native playback, you need a computer to run the MinimServer free edition. If you have not already purchased the Nucleus, you can setup a Windows computer to run both Roon and MinimServer. If you have already purchased the Nucleus, then you need another computer or NAS (e.g. QNAP HS-453DX) to run MinimServer.
 
Thanks. You've lost me I'm afraid. At the moment I have a Melco and an iPad with the Melco app. I use this app to find albums on Qobuz and then persuade the Melco to play these albums. I was hoping that the Esoteric player and the Esoteric Sound Stream app would work in the same way. Is that not so?
 
If you're using Melco, you can upgrade the Melco firmware to latest 2021 version and use it as a Roon Ready streamer to use with your DAC for Roon playback without buying anything.

If you use N-03T for local music files, then you need to run MinimServer on the Melco, then use Esoteric or Lumin app to control the playback. You don't need to use Melco app with N-03T, at least not for playback control.

If you only play from Qobuz without playing local music files, then you don't need MinimServer.
 
I absolutely dontagree with you: a separate endpoint sounds better. First of all, you bring that the more pcs, the worse the sound. Do you have an idea how many pcs there are between the audio file server and your house?

but I dont care about about all those pcs, I do care about 2

1. the pc that does the calculation to upsample those flac files
2. most important, the last one in my case the endpoint (streamer)

There are 2 reasons for using a streamer instead of a pc at the final stage

1. as said here in this topic: pcs generate electronic noise
2. those pc boards come with their own hard switched power supplies, and an linear external power supply wont make sense for pcs

For that reason I use a separate streamer, that is only powered by an external hand made linear power supply, (see profile picture). The latter is even more costly then the streamer, the result of changing a cheap lps by this one is amazing
 
After many trials and listening my choice is Qobuz->Nucleus->USB->DAC(CA851N)->preamp->amp etc

Control via macbook or ipad...

Excellent SQ
 
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