Roon problems

It's possible but for me definitely not something I give a second thought.

The Roon UI is amazing. No argument. My issue is that it’s been buggy and there is no doubt that Roon has an effect on the sound. The horsepower it needs creates NOISE.

The Aurender has no issue with the size of our library and it sounds great. It’s a lower power device and it’s software isn’t noisy bloatware. Lumin with Minimserver has no problem with the library and sounds great!

You will see, in the future, folks looking for the ultimate in digital sound moving away from Roon. Remember you read it here first.

I’m not bashing Roon, I’m just stating what I feel and what I experience all day long. I still think it’s UI, search features, etc are unmatched, but I don’t think it’s the best for sound. It’s become buggy and bloated and if they move more into home automation/CI space (as I predict they will), then it will become even more bloated requiring even more and faster hardware.


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The Roon UI is amazing. No argument. My issue is that it’s been buggy and there is no doubt that Roon has an effect on the sound. The horsepower it needs creates NOISE.

The Aurender has no issue with the size of our library and it sounds great. It’s a lower power device and it’s software isn’t noisy bloatware. Lumin with Minimserver has no problem with the library and sounds great!

You will see, in the future, folks looking for the ultimate in digital sound moving away from Roon. Remember you read it here first.

I’m not bashing Roon, I’m just stating what I feel and what I experience all day long. I still think it’s UI, search features, etc are unmatched, but I don’t think it’s the best for sound. It’s become buggy and bloated and if they move more into home automation/CI space (as I predict they will), then it will become even more bloated requiring even more and faster hardware.


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Mike, you had a different view back then when I voiced the same sound quality issues with Roon. I am glad that you realize it now :)

Audiophiles forms the least % of Roon's customer base and all they are doing nowadays is to bloat their s/w with flashy features/AI that audiophiles does not care which in turn has an effect on sound quality.

https://www.audioshark.org/computer...me-price-increase-699-a-17415.html#post287430
 
With the availability of Qobuz and Tidal do you really need to maintain (own) a large number of music files and store them on your servers. When you are demoing gear for a customer it is just as easy to find and play if from one of the sites rather than hogging up space on your servers.
I've occasionally had network reliability issues at a time when I needed to stream some music over the Internet. That being said, more often than not the music someone wants to listen to is not music that I have my own copy of anyway.

For what it's worth, the only issues I've had with Roon are when the I/O bus on the Roon Core Intel NUC is saturated. In which case I'll usually get a playback error, but Roon itself is working fine. My music files are stored on a separate NAS. I just have to ensure nothing else is trying to perform a lot of I/O at the same time.
 
Mike, you had a different view back then when I voiced the same sound quality issues with Roon. I am glad that you realize it now :)

Audiophiles forms the least % of Roon's customer base and all they are doing nowadays is to bloat their s/w with flashy features/AI that audiophiles does not care which in turn has an effect on sound quality.

https://www.audioshark.org/computer...me-price-increase-699-a-17415.html#post287430

You may want to revisit that thread. I said, we were comparing Roon on an Innuos Statement Vs Roon Nucleus. We didn’t hear much of a difference.

What I also said was: “If you want to know what I think SOUNDS the best, it’s still the Aurender.”

So I’m not sure it’s about “coming around”. My frustration with Roon is in the store and at home. It’s just buggy.


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Maybe it is just me but it seems like most of the time I see people having issues they are using some type of I product. Maybe the core issue is really Apple not Roon?

I cannot remember ever having an issue with Roon. It just works. Then again I store all my files locally and have Roon Server and HQPlayer running on the Windows 10 server and Roon Controller running on a Microsoft Surface. It just runs like any other of my audio components. I turn of the computer, turn on the DAC, fire up the Surface, give it a couple minutes for everything to load up... boom, works perfect, everytime.
 
Roon? Buggy as hell. Drives me nuts lately. It just hangs. Click on a playlist with MAYBE 30 tracks in it and I get this white square in the middle of the screen.
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Could be that you’ve maxed out the amount of songs that the Nucleus Plus can handle on your NAS. Others have reported similarly that had very large music catalogs.

Ken
 
I would be interested to know what the "ultimate in digital sound moving away from Roon" is? The only players currently in the mix that I know of are Stylus, Audivanna which are really good sounding players. I'm aware there are a ton more out there, but have no interest in command line files one at a time or the multitude of other archaic stand alone types. Aurender and the like are turnkey which I'm sure are great, have a target audience etc.. but have zero interest in those solutions personally.

I use HQP which is probably one of the better/best sounding players out. I use ROON for the lib management and HQP for the sound engine, always have. There are a fair amount of users that use this combo setup but certainly not the norm or a small %. Although some might say HQP is of the "archaic type", but its integrated into roon for one, has its own NAA and can run embedded etc..different animal all together IMHO.

Never had the issues that are currently being brought up. Although I don't stream I buy music and have a good size lib (4300 albums). Whether that's large/small, dunno as its all relative but just mentioned it for reference.

None of the solutions above are like roon (generally speaking) so its not an apples to apples. I understand the frustrations if a particular solution is acting up, but they all have issues at some point, in some systems, some use cases. Every solution has users that say its the best or it sucks - way too many variables to fit every users infrastructure / use case. Roon has got more complex (the back-end) and is prob more hardware intensive than it was several yrs ago, I honestly don't know.

I do know there are certain ways/things needed to get roon to perform its best. Will be interesting to see where roon goes, how it evolves or craps out. I've got my lifetime license worth up to this point so all is good with me for now.
 
This to me is the perfect solution... the best of both worlds.... Roon's amazing interface and meta-data, etc., and HQPlayer's sound quality playback engine.
 
This to me is the perfect solution... the best of both worlds.... Roon's amazing interface and meta-data, etc., and HQPlayer's sound quality playback engine.

Right, but its not for everyone obviously and requires a bit more tech savy person I think and some just want plug n play. Again, there is no right or wrong - you find something that works for your environment and that you like.
 
Great question. From my testing (Auralic, Aurender, Innuos, Melco, Roon, etc.) I have found, hands down, Aurender SOUNDS the best. Roon’s interface is second to none. It’s sexy and has the best search feature hands down. I love the stability of usability/functionality of the Lumin app. The one that surprised me was the Melco. No, I don’t sell Melco, but I was damn impressed with their app and sound. I have not tried the new Auralic stuff (the stuff just announced).

But for me, the Aurender eco-system (ACS, W20SE, A30, N10, etc) really delivers the goods. The app has never crashed on me either! It’s quite stable. Sonically, I just haven’t found anything better. But it doesn’t do Roon and that’s the rub for some folks. That’s why the Lumin U1 and U1 mini is so hot right now. If someone says “I don’t give a sh!t about Roon, then we sell them either the Lumin U1/U1 mini with the excellent free Lumin app or an Aurender if they want internal storage.


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Right, but its not for everyone obviously and requires a bit more tech savy person I think and some just want plug n play. Again, there is no right or wrong - you find something that works for your environment and that you like.
Totally agree, but something like Roon by itself is much more plug and play. Any software takes a bit of configuration and setup patience of course :). I found that the sound performance from Roon by itself was very close but HQPlayer was slightly better. I guess audiophiles will go to extremes for every little tad of improvements they can get. :D I would be more interested in comparisons of pure software applications since items such as Sooloos and others previously mentioned in this thread are both software and hardware. If I remember correct the guys who started Roon had previously developed the Sooloos system for Meridian.
 
Great question. From my testing (Auralic, Aurender, Innuos, Melco, Roon, etc.) I have found, hands down, Aurender SOUNDS the best. Roon’s interface is second to none. It’s sexy and has the best search feature hands down. I love the stability of usability/functionality of the Lumin app. The one that surprised me was the Melco. No, I don’t sell Melco, but I was damn impressed with their app and sound. I have not tried the new Auralic stuff (the stuff just announced).But for me, the Aurender eco-system (ACS, W20SE, A30, N10, etc) really delivers the goods. The app has never crashed on me either! It’s quite stable. Sonically, I just haven’t found anything better. But it doesn’t do Roon and that’s the rub for some folks. That’s why the Lumin U1 and U1 mini is so hot right now. If someone says “I don’t give a sh!t about Roon, then we sell them either the Lumin U1/U1 mini with the excellent free Lumin app or an Aurender if they want internal storage.
Have you compared the Aurender to HQPlayer? Because if HQPlayer sounds as good or better, then when combined with Roon (which is baked into Roon) you get the best of both worlds. Also the Aurender is both software and hardware device, correct? So it can't be used on other devices or generic computers, correct?
 
Have you compared the Aurender to HQPlayer? Because if HQPlayer sounds as good or better, then when combined with Roon (which is baked into Roon) you get the best of both worlds. Also the Aurender is both software and hardware device, correct? So it can't be used on other devices or generic computers, correct?

Correct. It’s an ecosystem.


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would be interested to hear your thoughts on the observed SQ difference between aurender conductor player and roon being attributable to the hardware rather than the software?

the $22k aurender w20se has elaborate (exquisite?) power and isolation -- and, i assume some of that to some degree is present in other models down the the chain such as the $8k n10. same for lumin.

the roon nucleus+ is literally the guts of a $575 (retail) intel nuc put inside a custom fanless case -- as stated by roon, nothing audiophile about this hardware.

absolutely no doubt in my mind that audio transports such as the aurender, lumin, etc. will sound better than a roon nucleus, regardless of software.

i assume there is some real difference in how the competing software handles things like up-sampling, format conversion, etc. however, i would expect the results of such differences to be more "flavor" subject to individual tastes than to be SQ in the strict sense.

the real test would be to run the various player software on the same equipment. unfortunately, the proprietary nature of the various manufacturer's software make this impossible.
 
True true... I would be willing to put my system, my custom computer running Roon and HQPlayer up against the Aurender. Through my T+A DAC running at DSD512 (not sure what the Aurender can do), I believe it could compete... but I am guessing this direct comparison will never happen :)...
 
True true... I would be willing to put my system, my custom computer running Roon and HQPlayer up against the Aurender. Through my T+A DAC running at DSD512 (not sure what the Aurender can do), I believe it could compete... but I am guessing this direct comparison will never happen :)...

I’d bet on the Aurender all day long on that one.


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What resolution does the Aurender do? Does it do DSD upsampling? Just curious.... if all else is equivalent as in same system, same capable DAC (that can handle DSD512), the best my server can do, upsampling running Roon and HQPlayer... not sure what the best the Aurender can do but that would be a fair comparison; best each can do. I have a feeling you might be surprised :P.... I am guessing the differences would be splitting hairs :).

Would be fun to run some real comparisons though.
 
Therein lies the rub - it really is a flavor for lack of a better term. Some want plug n play and a closed ecosystem where everything is basically laid out to use "x y z". There is no fussing around (generally speaking) with a multitude of options, components etc.. Others chose an open type of system where you sort of compile your equiv of a closed system. You chose your LPS, storage, networking etc..

Neither is better than the other and they all have pros and cons to varying degrees depending on your environment, skill set, goals etc.. IMHO there really no best solution and sort of pointless to even go down that road. There certainly is no "winner" in anything audio as its not a competition. One chooses a solution, either likes it or doesn't and if not, moves on to something else until it fits within ones environment / end goal.
 
would be interested to hear your thoughts on the observed SQ difference between aurender conductor player and roon being attributable to the hardware rather than the software?

the $22k aurender w20se has elaborate (exquisite?) power and isolation -- and, i assume some of that to some degree is present in other models down the the chain such as the $8k n10. same for lumin.

the roon nucleus+ is literally the guts of a $575 (retail) intel nuc put inside a custom fanless case -- as stated by roon, nothing audiophile about this hardware.

absolutely no doubt in my mind that audio transports such as the aurender, lumin, etc. will sound better than a roon nucleus, regardless of software.

i assume there is some real difference in how the competing software handles things like up-sampling, format conversion, etc. however, i would expect the results of such differences to be more "flavor" subject to individual tastes than to be SQ in the strict sense.

the real test would be to run the various player software on the same equipment. unfortunately, the proprietary nature of the various manufacturer's software make this impossible.

While there’s more on the hardware side, one note is Aurenders OCXO clock, kept at constant temperature


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