Roon users - Can we have your opinion?

I've been running Roon latest build for the past few days, must admit I'm mighty impressed by it. I'm using Roon for the play back of my files stored on an external hard drive plugged into the back of my Mac mini, I couldn't get Roon to pick up my WD Mycloud NAS, will have to do some more work on that to see if I can get it to work. I did try to use HQ Player for DSD upsampling however my Mac isn't powerful enough, but I'm more than satisfied with the sound that Roon puts out

im on the 2 month demo trial and will continue to run it for that amount of time, I'll more than likely end up buying it
 
In Roon under "Settings" click the "Storage" tab. Under "Watched Folders" you can "Add a Folder". If it a local drive or a mapped drive that you want to click "Local Folder" and enter the drive number and path to the folder, i.e. C:/DSD_Files. There is also an option to put in a Network path which is what I assume you do for your NAS. I only use internal drives on my music server so I don't "Watch" network folders, but I am sure you can.
 
I have been using Roon for a while and it certainly looks impressive but I have found that music sounds better played with Manic Moose on my Bryston BDP-2. Through Roon it does not sound as detailed and the soundstage is not as defined. I think I am going to cancel my Roon subscription and stick with Manic Moose which has Tidal as an application. And it's not because I am a crazy Canuck.:exciting:
 
At first I thought JRivers sounded a little better. But with one of Roon Engineers suggestions I went with Roon headless server and a separate Roon controller. It then started sounding better than JRiver. They are all so close that sometimes it is just a matter of fine tuning to get the best in my view :)....
 
That is what I have done, a headless server on my pc and a Roon bridge on my Android tablet going to the Bryston BDP-2. Perhaps I haven't set something up properly, I am a digital newbie.
 
Albert said:
I have found that music sounds better played with Manic Moose on my Bryston BDP-2. Through Roon it does not sound as detailed and the soundstage is not as defined.
Click to expand...

Are your music files placed in a NAS? Do you mean NAS -> Ethernet -> BDP-2 vs NAS -> Ethernet -> Headless Roon -> USB -> BDP-2? Thanks.
 
Good question. Like I said, I am a newbie but here goes. My Flac music files are on an external hard drive connected to my BDP-2. The headless roon server is on a pc in another room connected to the BDP-2 with an ethernet cable. The roon bridge is on a Samsung tablet connected by wifi to the BDP-2 (I think). Does that make sense?
 
I assume you take the hard drive to the Roon PC when using Roon. I also assume that you are not streaming music from/to Samsung tablet to/from Roon PC. With the Samsung tablet out of the music path, that becomes:

1. BDP-2 with USB HDD
vs
2. Headless Roon PC with USB HDD -> Ethernet -> (Roon Ready) BDP-2
 
Actually I leave the HD connected to the BDP-2 when I listen to music files and not connected to the pc. I can control the BDP-2 by either the pc or tablet when using Manic Moose. I think I need the tablet to run Roon. But my knowledge is limited.
 
If this is not too much trouble, could you take the hard drive and connect it to the Roon PC (and change the Roon configuration for finding the hard drive), see if it sounds better this way?
 
I've been a lifetime subscriber to Roon now for about 5 months. I love it. JRiver started to add a ton of bloat and features that I could care less about, it also was not that great at presenting my music to me in a unified format across devices. With Roon, no matter what I'm using, Macbook, iPad/iPhone, Windows PC, I get the same experience controlling my playback devices. What's the coolest thing they've done? With the recent version that released about a month ago you can control Sonos devices. No more need for a Sonos database, app or anything. You can directly select a sonos device on your network and play back anything to it. It will downsample DSD or 24bit audio to what Sonos can handle and away you go.

What you should know? Roon is a database-based system. You install it on one machine (your server with all your music) and then install clients everywhere else. You can play back from essentially anywhere on just about anything. It's truly worth the money for the lifetime subscription. I asked the founders what they would do if they were ever acquired and had to disband Roon. Their answer was that they would deliver one last release and enable all the functionality without the checks so you'd have Roon, just not the enhanced metadata they provide when you add titles and look up artists. I find that a great answer and so I opted-in.

Sound quality is on par with Jriver, but you can also use HQPlayer with Roon and they work great together. But Roon has added a ton of features including DSP and other's that are built to help improve audio SQ so you may not even want to mess with HQPlayer unless you're a die-hard.

Good luck in your search. I recommend you try them out before buying. There's a code in this forum for a 6 month trial. You can run Roon and Jriver at the same time and they don't interfere with each other.

Bryan
 
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