Roon v1.5

[insider9]

You will need to run Roon on a PC then your Bluesound Node will act as an endpoint.

You input room correction filters into Roon. If you want the best available (FIR) convolution based filters you will need to measure your room with a calibrated mic. Then create the filters manually. There is free software available to do it but be prepared to learn a lot and spend a lot of time. You can of course buy a software that will calculate filters or even hire someone to do it for you.

Now, for the best part single Roon Core or server can send data to many endpoint and you can correct every system with different DSP. So for the price of Roon you can have room correction in every room in your house

 

[spiny norman]

You can indeed but a NAS is ultimately a low powered PC. There are also streamers that can act as cores Innuos Zenith family, Elac Discovery and Roon Nucleus. Number of devices keeps growing.

I probably worded it wrong, the point was Roon requires just a little bit too much in terms of resources than mobile or most streamers can give.

AFAIK Elac is just Roon Essentials, ie a very stripped down version of Roon designed for small libraries, and Nucleus seems a very expensive (£1500+) way of doing something you could do at a fraction of the price with a budget PC.

I think i read somewhere about someone running Roon on a USB drive plugged into his NAS, and they seemed very happy with the performance.

 

[JamesMellor]

Would this run on a mini Mac 1.4 GHz i5 4gb ram 500 go hdd about 300 gb of music and can it just feed into any dac ?

 

[insider9]

It would have no problem running with these specs. However for best performance it's best to have Roon on an SSD. The actual library can be on a traditional drive.

 

[insider9]

You can indeed but a NAS is ultimately a low powered PC. There are also streamers that can act as cores Innuos Zenith family, Elac Discovery and Roon Nucleus. Number of devices keeps growing.

I probably worded it wrong, the point was Roon requires just a little bit too much in terms of resources than mobile or most streamers can give.

AFAIK Elac is just Roon Essentials, ie a very stripped down version of Roon designed for small libraries, and Nucleus seems a very expensive (£1500+) way of doing something you could do at a fraction of the price with a budget PC.

I think i read somewhere about someone running Roon on a USB drive plugged into his NAS, and they seemed very happy with the performance.

Didn't realise about Elac Discovery being Roon Essentials. I'm running mine on a very low powered and completely silent solution. Which should cost no more than £200 to build.

 

[spiny norman]

I'm running mine on a very low powered and completely silent solution. Which should cost no more than £200 to build.

Indeed: I can't see what Nucelus has got to justify that pricing. Nice case, though ;-)

 

[insider9]

It was a bit of an experiment if I'm honest which turned out rather well. I was unsure how much processing power you actually need but for single zone I can do DSP on anything up to DSD64 and output as PCM to a DAC which fits my needs perfectly.

Should I need more processing in the future I'd go with a different solution but keep this one as a bridge.

 

[JamesMellor]

Thanks I’ll try the trial

 

[insider9]

Thanks I’ll try the trial 

Look for a code for usually 60 days. As opposed to normal 14 day trial.

 

[insider9]

Try this

HDF1-VJM7-WU9Z

No credit card info needed. Just register with an email.

Redeem this at

https://roonlabs.com/coupon.html

 

[newlash09]

Currently I am using my Bluesound Powernode 2 with an USB flash drive attached to its back to stream my music. I also have a copy of the music library on my WIN 10 PC on a separate HD and I can also stream it from that source. I assume that if I use the USB drive with Roon I could only benefit from the indexing/cataloguing function the Roon is offering. If I install the Roon to my PC would I be able to use the room correction and DSP functions? If that is a possibility, how is the room acoustic situation assessed? do I need a microphone connected to the PC or it is done wirelessly (tablet/phone)?

I am perfectly fine with the indexing done by the Bluesound and I would not pay the price of Roon to improve that area only. However, two weeks ago a local audio store had a demonstration of their new offerings. I listened to the exact same song in the exact same system (Money for Nothing) played from Heos and a lap top running the Roon. I could not believe my old ears how much better the Roon was. It was so much smoother and the timing was so much better. If I could add the room correction function to my system I would take it into the consideration no matter the cost.

The overall sound quality. A lot of folks are using roon for this alone. With media management, DSP and Room correction being free extras

 

[ivavcr]

I will have to do some serious reading!

 

[newlash09]

I will have to do some serious reading!

 

[andyjm]

Just like other music software that you mentioned. Roon can need a lot of processing power depending on your music library size, room correction and upsampling options used. And this kind computing muscle has disadvantages like a noisy pc in the audio room, heat generation and the main issue of jitter transmission.

From what I read regarding roon. The advantage of roon is that, it has its own lossless method of transmission of digital data called as RAAT. Suitable roon end points can decode this incoming data and receive the pristine digital signal alone without any digital bugbears like jitter etc. This contributes to roon's superior digital signal transmission.

And the main advantage is that the audio quality depends on the roon end point alone. And not on the server ( or core as they call it ). So folks can repurpose any existing PC's for the job or get a super power machine from a audiophile company and still have the same sound quality in the end. As the sound quality will depend on the roon end point, which can be a simple machine designed for this purpose alone.

I spent some time looking at Roon. Looks an interesting product. In many ways similar to Logitech media server and its predecessors of 10 years ago. Makes you wonder what the Squeeze product range could be now if Logitech hadn't made such a dog's breakfast of it.

I would question your jitter comments though. That is driven entirely by the endpoint. The blurb on the Roon site about RAAT is not clear, but effectively says that if the endpoint has jitter mitigation, then RAAT won't mess it up - which is generally true of most transport systems.

 

[newlash09]

Just like other music software that you mentioned. Roon can need a lot of processing power depending on your music library size, room correction and upsampling options used. And this kind computing muscle has disadvantages like a noisy pc in the audio room, heat generation and the main issue of jitter transmission.

From what I read regarding roon. The advantage of roon is that, it has its own lossless method of transmission of digital data called as RAAT. Suitable roon end points can decode this incoming data and receive the pristine digital signal alone without any digital bugbears like jitter etc. This contributes to roon's superior digital signal transmission.

And the main advantage is that the audio quality depends on the roon end point alone. And not on the server ( or core as they call it ). So folks can repurpose any existing PC's for the job or get a super power machine from a audiophile company and still have the same sound quality in the end. As the sound quality will depend on the roon end point, which can be a simple machine designed for this purpose alone.

I spent some time looking at Roon. Looks an interesting product. In many ways similar to Logitech media server and its predecessors of 10 years ago.  Makes you wonder what the Squeeze product range could be now if Logitech hadn't made such a dog's breakfast of it.

I would question your jitter comments though.  That is driven entirely by the endpoint.  The blurb on the Roon site about RAAT is not clear, but effectively says that if the endpoint has jitter mitigation, then RAAT won't mess it up - which is generally true of most transport systems.

 

Honestly I dont know what artifacts a PC directly connected either via Ethernet or USB would pass on to a DAC. But it seems to be universally accepted that this is not the ideal connection from SQ point of view. Depending on where I read it, the reasons vary from jitter to noise to EMI. And some times a combination of the three above.

Considering that my knowledge in computers is non existent, I cannot fathom the reasons but can accept the results posted by millions of users on several forums. Hence I shared it here

And again from my reading, roon also advises keeping the end point separate from the server to avoid these digital artifacts.

The RAAT protocol they have is a asynchronous protocol with transfer of buffered audio streams , which are checked fore and back for transfer errors. And missing bits being retransferred for a bit perfect transmission.

Apart from that bit perfect transmission, the timing is vastly improved, as the roon end point conveys the clock of the DAC, and the roon server adjusts its software clock to exactly match the clock of the DAC. So the digital bits are streamed exactly in sync with the DAC's clock.

Usually when a computer is directly connected to DAC. And presuming the PC's clock is slower than the DAC's clock, then there will be instances when the DAC has to wait for the bits to arrive. And if the PC clock is faster, then if the DAC doesn't have a buffer, these bits will be omitted. So supposedly roon also eliminates the above timing errors, leading to better SQ

 

[Andrewjvt]

Just like other music software that you mentioned. Roon can need a lot of processing power depending on your music library size, room correction and upsampling options used. And this kind computing muscle has disadvantages like a noisy pc in the audio room, heat generation and the main issue of jitter transmission.

From what I read regarding roon. The advantage of roon is that, it has its own lossless method of transmission of digital data called as RAAT. Suitable roon end points can decode this incoming data and receive the pristine digital signal alone without any digital bugbears like jitter etc. This contributes to roon's superior digital signal transmission.

And the main advantage is that the audio quality depends on the roon end point alone. And not on the server ( or core as they call it ). So folks can repurpose any existing PC's for the job or get a super power machine from a audiophile company and still have the same sound quality in the end. As the sound quality will depend on the roon end point, which can be a simple machine designed for this purpose alone.

I spent some time looking at Roon. Looks an interesting product. In many ways similar to Logitech media server and its predecessors of 10 years ago.  Makes you wonder what the Squeeze product range could be now if Logitech hadn't made such a dog's breakfast of it.

I would question your jitter comments though.  That is driven entirely by the endpoint.  The blurb on the Roon site about RAAT is not clear, but effectively says that if the endpoint has jitter mitigation, then RAAT won't mess it up - which is generally true of most transport systems.

 

Honestly I dont know what artifacts a PC directly connected either via Ethernet or USB would pass on to a DAC. But it seems to be universally accepted that this is not the ideal connection from SQ point of view. Depending on where I read it, the reasons vary from jitter to noise to EMI. And some times a combination of the three above.

Considering that my knowledge in computers is non existent, I cannot fathom the reasons but can accept the results posted by millions of users on several forums. Hence I shared it here

And again from my reading, roon also advises keeping the end point separate from the server to avoid these digital artifacts.

The RAAT protocol they have is a asynchronous protocol with transfer of buffered audio streams , which are checked fore and back for transfer errors. And missing bits being retransferred for a bit perfect transmission.

Apart from that bit perfect transmission, the timing is vastly improved, as the roon end point conveys the clock of the DAC, and the roon server adjusts its software clock to exactly match the clock of the DAC. So the digital bits are streamed exactly in sync with the DAC's clock.

Usually when a computer is directly connected to DAC. And presuming the PC's clock is slower than the DAC's clock, then there will be instances when the DAC has to wait for the bits to arrive. And if the PC clock is faster, then if the DAC doesn't have a buffer, these bits will be omitted. So supposedly roon also eliminates the above timing errors, leading to better SQ

Possibly typical audiophile paranoid osd with an element of truth and much snake oil.

These sort of comments make the user want to ditch his laptop for better sound quality and power supplies for the transport.

I'd like to leave that side to my dac

 

[newlash09]

Just like other music software that you mentioned. Roon can need a lot of processing power depending on your music library size, room correction and upsampling options used. And this kind computing muscle has disadvantages like a noisy pc in the audio room, heat generation and the main issue of jitter transmission.

From what I read regarding roon. The advantage of roon is that, it has its own lossless method of transmission of digital data called as RAAT. Suitable roon end points can decode this incoming data and receive the pristine digital signal alone without any digital bugbears like jitter etc. This contributes to roon's superior digital signal transmission.

And the main advantage is that the audio quality depends on the roon end point alone. And not on the server ( or core as they call it ). So folks can repurpose any existing PC's for the job or get a super power machine from a audiophile company and still have the same sound quality in the end. As the sound quality will depend on the roon end point, which can be a simple machine designed for this purpose alone.

I spent some time looking at Roon. Looks an interesting product. In many ways similar to Logitech media server and its predecessors of 10 years ago.  Makes you wonder what the Squeeze product range could be now if Logitech hadn't made such a dog's breakfast of it.

I would question your jitter comments though.  That is driven entirely by the endpoint.  The blurb on the Roon site about RAAT is not clear, but effectively says that if the endpoint has jitter mitigation, then RAAT won't mess it up - which is generally true of most transport systems.

 

Honestly I dont know what artifacts a PC directly connected either via Ethernet or USB would pass on to a DAC. But it seems to be universally accepted that this is not the ideal connection from SQ point of view. Depending on where I read it, the reasons vary from jitter to noise to EMI. And some times a combination of the three above.

Considering that my knowledge in computers is non existent, I cannot fathom the reasons but can accept the results posted by millions of users on several forums. Hence I shared it here

And again from my reading, roon also advises keeping the end point separate from the server to avoid these digital artifacts.

The RAAT protocol they have is a asynchronous protocol with transfer of buffered audio streams , which are checked fore and back for transfer errors. And missing bits being retransferred for a bit perfect transmission.

Apart from that bit perfect transmission, the timing is vastly improved, as the roon end point conveys the clock of the DAC, and the roon server adjusts its software clock to exactly match the clock of the DAC. So the digital bits are streamed exactly in sync with the DAC's clock.

Usually when a computer is directly connected to DAC. And presuming the PC's clock is slower than the DAC's clock, then there will be instances when the DAC has to wait for the bits to arrive. And if the PC clock is faster, then if the DAC doesn't have a buffer, these bits will be omitted. So supposedly roon also eliminates the above timing errors, leading to better SQ

Possibly typical audiophile paranoid osd with an element of truth and much snake oil.

These sort of comments make the user want to ditch his laptop for better sound quality and power supplies for the transport.

I'd like to leave that side to my dac

I guess

I would have been keen to try out all that supposed snake oil, only if I had the means. Till then a fence sitter here

 

[newlash09]

As weird as I may sound, from what I am saying here regards digital sources.

I can assure all the naysayers, that you would be deemed equally weird on computer audiophile, avs and audio stream forums, for what you are saying

 

[Strictly Stereo]

Specifically on the subject of jitter, this could very well be an issue with USB audio. It is unlikely to be an issue when sending data over a network via RAAT.

Roon has some other processing capabilities which can effect the sound, such as upsampling, downsampling, convolution, parametric EQ and digital volume control. Any of these could conceivably have a negative impact on the sound if implemented badly or used incorrectly.

 

[JamesMellor]

Thanks insider9

I installed the core on the Mac mini and the full version on my laptop (Macbook with SSD) and the control app on my ipad. USB out to my amp (NAD 390DD) selected that model from the list and it works flawlessy so far. It also found and connects to all airplay devices in the house.

I had three different songs playing on three different devices so the Mini can handle the work load.

Few quirks in the libary some multiple disc CD's are stacked under one cover with a little number, others are split into seperate covers. Some albums have been split up and I'm struggling to get the regroup to work.

I do belive it is an improvement over itunes SQ wise, I'll run it for a week and then switch back to compare. £370 quid is abit steep but we'll see.

 

[insider9]

Roon recognises everything automatically when building database and sometimes will assign tracks to a different version of the album. It's only on initial setup and based on often messed up metadata It may take some user input to organise at first but it's not difficult to do. I'm glad you've got it up and running.

See how you find it first and don't think about the cost. You can always do a 1 year subscription if you're not sure if you want to commit if you decide it's worth it for you.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

Hi insider I need some info please

Ive just brought a new desktop Pc because my laptop was so slow it did my head-in anyway this Pc I’ve brought has a far better spec then the laptop did basically i7 processer , 16gb of Ram DDR 4 , solid state hard drive , 3 Tb normal hard drive , graphics card , sound card that sort of thing

I got thinking I was going to buy a Nas but now I have this quick desktop with the 3tb drive I have plenty of storage to play with so my question is can Roon convert my CDs to Flac or DSD ?

obviously you get the idea that I will store the music on the desktop but then network it to my streamer in what ever file quality the Roon software streams to my current Yamaha wxc50

am i correct in my thinking if so I will give the 2 month trial a go to see if I like it and I also noticed that Roon will also manage my iTunes library as well

 

[insider9]

The desktop you have will be more than enough to run Roon. Even with many zones and upsampling and DSP should you want.

Best way to connect it in your setup will be to use Oppo 203 as an endpoint over wired network. Yamaha WXC-50 would work as an endpoint too but it would do so over Airplay which would not give you bit perfect playback and would not give you full benefit of Roon. Make sure both Oppo and desktop are wired for best performance. Oppo may need firmware update to work as an endpoint but that should be straight forward.

Otherwise you will need something like dbPoweramp to rip your CDs. Roon doesn't do that. But I think it would be great for you to try it on a 2 month trial. It won't cost you anything and if you don't see value in it after two months fair enough.

I'll be happy to assist and should you be stuck feel free to give me a call.

 

[Blacksabbath25]

The desktop you have will be more than enough to run Roon. Even with many zones and upsampling and DSP should you want.

Best way to connect it in your setup will be to use Oppo 203 as an endpoint over wired network. Yamaha WXC-50 would work as an endpoint too but it would do so over Airplay which would not give you bit perfect playback and would not give you full benefit of Roon. Make sure both Oppo and desktop are wired for best performance. Oppo may need firmware update to work as an endpoint but that should be straight forward.

Otherwise you will need something like dbPoweramp to rip your CDs. Roon doesn't do that. But I think it would be great for you to try it on a 2 month trial. It won't cost you anything and if you don't see value in it after two months fair enough.

I'll be happy to assist and should you be stuck feel free to give me a call.

I did have it in mind to use the Yamaha wxc50 as it is hardwired to my network and it’s meant to do DSD , Flac which I’ve just learnt that it’s just a different way of compressing a music file with out loss Flac that is .

i wouldn’t use iTunes so sorry I do not understand why I would be using airplay ? But I do own a big library on iTunes as well which the Room would be good for as well as my ripped CDs

I wanted to store the files on my desktop and then use the Yamaha wxc50 as a end point thinking that the Yamaha wxc50 would playback the high res files and using my iPad as the remote .

And obviously my intention is to change the Yamaha for a linn streamer but just wanted to know if what I had in mind would work ?

 

[insider9]

There are several ways to connect it all up. I've given you the most optimal way I can think of. Check if your iPad can run Roon controller as some older ones can't. However you connect it all up the idea is you will be using iPad or your phone or both to control Roon.

If you use Yamaha WXC-50 as a DAC you will be forced to connect it up via optical input. Does your desktop have optical out? That means no DSD and likely more jitter. And you more or less have to have a PC in the same room. You can use Yamaha as a networked endpoint with Roon. As Yamaha isn't Roon Ready the only way to do it over network will be via Airplay. That option is even worse than optical.

Oppo 203 has more connectivity than Yamaha. But once again as it is a Roon Ready device your best bet will be to do it over network using Roon's protocol called RAAT. This means your PC can be in any part of your house and there will be no loss in quality. Just make sure both are wired for best performance.

Roon will work with Linn DS streamer now also should you go that way. It will be networked only as Linn DS streamers don't offer usual DAC inputs.