Introducing Roon 1.8 - COMING SOON

In the spirit of Ozzie Osborne talking about Justin Bieber, who the f%@&! is Emile? [emoji3]

Regarding the two servers however, if it sounds better after the upgrade as you say, then I would probably stick with the NUC+ going forward. But I’m anyway happy with my pimped-up NAS.


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Emile is the owner of Taiko. Once he gets in and works his magic, the Taiko will be on top again. But the Taiko software is still superior sonically.


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Updated some as silk for me, PC Server and Surface Pro 6 controller. Really like the new interface. Sound quality is the same for me, then again my playback engine is HQPlayer. Oh, to jump to any letter for a search for me was easy. I simply put my finger on the scroll bar on the right side. When I started scrolling the letter came up. Took me about a second to get to any letter I wanted.
 
That’s good news. Can you elaborate on how it sounds better?

I own the Roon Nucleus Plus. I’ve been listening to the Roon software update for several hours now and I would swear the vocals sound more holographic than before the update, really 3D. My system quite honestly sounds better than it ever has before. I would also be interested in learning what improvements Mike heard.

Ken
 
My update wasn't glitch free. While updating the Roon core, "Downloading..." stuck at 60% for a while. Maybe it was server load or something. I figured something is not right and killed Roon. Restarted and tried the update again after sometime. This time it went fine, though it took more time than usual. The database updates were fast. Anyways, its all minor but thought of posting it as it might help others in the same situation.

My Roon core, running on DIY server, is directly connected to the DAC. Nothing in between, except the USB cable. Though I haven't listened for long, there is no question there are obvious sound quality improvements in my setup - I have more overall depth and space between instruments, bass definition has improved slightly, less glares....
 
I own the Roon Nucleus Plus. I’ve been listening to the Roon software update for several hours now and I would swear the vocals sound more holographic than before the update, really 3D. My system quite honestly sounds better than it ever has before. I would also be interested in learning what improvements Mike heard.

Ken

Ken, similar experience here. I find playback via Roon sounds now a bit more transparent. On another forum I called it more open.


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Updated without a glitch. Haven’t tried on iPad yet as I couldn’t find mine. Using iPhone as I mostly do. No significant change in sound quality detected. If there’s any, probably very small.
 
Have not been up to the music room since the update, but have been looking for Roon app to be on the update list on my iPad, which it did not. So, I just opened the app, and it said there was update to Roon available, in the usual like blue banner. When I clicked “update all” it listed both the Roon server, and the iPad app were available to update. As per recommendations, I upgraded the iPad app first. It seemed to glitch at 75% progress, but eventually finished (be patient...)

First positive change: the iPad app does not force landscape orientation. Maybe I’ll get a chance to hear it tonight. (I do have Roon running at the headphone office system, which I will get to hear today)

Edit: I think the “glitch” was the database update, going on behind the scenes, as both the iPad, and the server, were updated during that process.
 
Have not been up to the music room since the update, but have been looking for Roon app to be on the update list on my iPad, which it did not. So, I just opened the app, and it said there was update to Roon available, in the usual like blue banner. When I clicked “update all” it listed both the Roon server, and the iPad app were available to update. As per recommendations, I upgraded the iPad app first. It seemed to glitch at 75% progress, but eventually finished (be patient...)

First positive change: the iPad app does not force landscape orientation. Maybe I’ll get a chance to hear it tonight. (I do have Roon running at the headphone office system, which I will get to hear today)

Edit: I think the “glitch” was the database update, going on behind the scenes, as both the iPad, and the server, were updated during that process.

I also had the Roon and IPad update at the same time. The Roon update went through quickly but the IPad update was huge and took nearly 30 minutes. Once the IPad update was completed, everything worked fine.

Ken
 
waiting for the dust to settle down before I update.

Anybody care to comment on the sound quality ? Same, better or worse ?

No changes in SQ. I read a statement from ROON in a FB group that they made no changes that would effect SQ.
 
No changes in SQ. I read a statement from ROON in a FB group that they made no changes that would effect SQ.

In the past they have made changes to the interface and added other features which were not audio-related and it did change sound quality. This is one of the issues with Roon's developers, they don't seem to understand that increased network activity can affect sound quality.
 
No changes in SQ. I read a statement from ROON in a FB group that they made no changes that would effect SQ.

Hmm, I could swear I heard an improvement in SQ. Maybe expectation bias on my part. The imaging sounds different than before. Maybe something else is causing it.

Ken
 
In the past they have made changes to the interface and added other features which were not audio-related and it did change sound quality. This is one of the issues with Roon's developers, they don't seem to understand that increased network activity can affect sound quality.


In that same post, they said the best step to take to improve SQ is to separate your ROON core from your ROON endpoint. The core is where the ‘noisy’ processing takes place.
 
I woke this AM to find none of my Remotes, 2 iPhones and my iPaD could find my Roon core.

Rebooted the core and now I can see it but it has lost contact with my NAS. Don’t have time right now but will remove that and start over again (now if I could only remember my NAS password...)

PM update

I had to delete my NAS path and enter it all over again. Use name / password etc. A bit of a pain but it is working fine now.

Not a drip difference in SQ.

As for the interface, I need to live with it awhile before I can say. Yes, it’s different but it’s too early say if it is better for me.
 
In the past they have made changes to the interface and added other features which were not audio-related and it did change sound quality. This is one of the issues with Roon's developers, they don't seem to understand that increased network activity can affect sound quality.

Bingo.
 
I own the Roon Nucleus Plus. I’ve been listening to the Roon software update for several hours now and I would swear the vocals sound more holographic than before the update, really 3D. My system quite honestly sounds better than it ever has before. I would also be interested in learning what improvements Mike heard.

Ken

That's great Ken. I own the Nucleus+ too so I am quite interested in what others are hearing or not hearing with the new upgrade.
 
Based on experience, I don't assume any software "upgrade" is going to improve SQ as sometimes the opposite happens and the SQ gets worse. I had to roll back a software upgrade for my DAC because it was my opinion the SQ changed for the worse. This is why I'm curious to see if a consensus emerges one way or the other before I update to 1.8.
 
Just updated the Core and all my remote devices. Everything working nicely.

Apart from the nicer GUI, I really like the improvements to the "Search" feature. Roon now gives you the option to search for items that are not currently in your library which makes it easier to find new music to add to your library. I still prefer the search function in Spotify, but Roon has definitely made a nice improvement to the functionality of "Search". Also the "Focus" feature is much easier to use. Will continue to explore.

I was not expecting any changes to the sound quality and got what I expected (expectation bias confirmed, I presume). If anyone has factual data that shows any change in SQ, I can be convinced otherwise. :)
 
from the 1.8 release notes:

Audio stack improvements

The audio pipeline in the Roon Core has been optimized to reduce memory traffic and CPU usage. We have also improved the efficiency and mathematical accuracy of the dithering algorithm used for DSP.


maybe this accounts for the SQ improvements being reported here, and on the roon community site?
 
Makes sense. It might be time to compare Roon's DSP to HQPlayer again. The last time I did it HQPlayer was better, but not by a long shot.
 
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