what about this: Shunyata Delta v2 NR- does that improve in your opinion?
Indeed! One could argue that their Alpha NR cable has a better balance of price/performance, however the Omega QR’s sound significantly better to my ears.
Certainly the Delta NR v1 improved things significantly on my Meridian setup. The Alpha NR is appreciably better in high current scenarios such as with Meridian’s active speakers (most noticeably in the bass), but the Delta is a great cable.
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With some components the Shunyata Delta v2 NR may work well. I do know the SQ of the Rossini kept getting better as I went all the way up to the Shunyata Omega QR-s power cable. Don’t sell yourself short on the Rossini power cable. However, for my Gryphon Antileon EVO stereo amp the Shunyata Sigma v2 NR worked as well as the Shunyata Omega QR-s and for my Gryphon Pandora pre-amp the Shunyata Alpha v2 NR worked really well so I was able to save some $$ since the amp and pre-amp both require 2 power cables each. If interested, I work with a terrific Shunyata dealer that I can refer.
If you enjoy listening to grand family pianos, then I highly recommend Brad Mehldau’s Beatles covers album called ‘Your Mother Should Know’. Brad plays solo, live with no vocals so all you hear is his great piano work on a well recorded grand piano.
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Rossini Apex shows even more now that roon has SQ issues…The differences btw. upnp/Mosaic and roon are really big- I would say it costs SQ wise 10-20% of the performance of the system (and I have a dedicated roon nucleus!). So if you go all-in with Apex you need a proper NAS system imho (talking Melco or Innuos)
Roon’s presentation is like playing behind a curtain, not colorful- it’s more “grey” and the backround is no longer “black” vs upnp. If you like to see what Apex brings into your system go upnp!
I called -after many listening hours- the Melco distributor here and chatted about my finding. He confirmed it and told me that many Melco users using upnp for a listening mode without roon (for backround and music detection roon is great, we agreed 
)
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Thanks! Little bit of a bummer re: Roon…thought I might try it out at some point but my original plan was to stream via Mosaic anyway.
One thing that dawned on me - it will be a pain to run an Ethernet cable to my unit. Does anyone have experience using a WiFi dongle, or is this a terrible idea?
Not with a hifi dongle, but I tried to use Diavolos (Ethernet over the power network)…and that was a bad idea SQ wise.
Can’t you put a WiFi expander near your dCS? F.ex. I’m using a AVM Fritzbox repeater to plug in power and it has one LAN port out!
Don’t assume that Roon does sound worse — or indeed different in any way — there’s very, very varied experiences in that, as with most audio debates.
People hear what they hear, but for what it’s worth I hear zero difference between Roon and Mosaic on my Rossini Apex.
(I also see no scenario in my system as to how there COULD be a difference — the music I enjoy is just 1s and 0s broadcast to a DAC that has an unshielded Ethernet cable up its jacksie and no other potentially problematic connection to my Roon Nucleus+, Qobuz, or anything else. I trust that some people do hear a difference, but for me there are more compelling psychological reasons for why they do than there are any others. I wish I did too — hey, better is better! (Or perhaps worse is worse and I should consider myself lucky that I get to enjoy Roon’s interface for no sonic detriment.)
Re: Network options — I love my eeros, and have one of the Ethernet ones near my Cisco unmanaged switch and GigaFoil fibre bridge. Works brilliantly.
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Simple- I asked my wife what sounds better, 5 out of 5 matches!
Upnp vs roon.
Could you expound on this a bit more?
I have FiOs too (with the white box plugged in in the closet). My belief was I’d need to run a cord from there to my system in another room which would be the issue. Are you saying I could plug an Eero (or google node or whatever) in close to the system, have it pick up the Wi-Fi, then run an Ethernet from that to the DAC?
I don’t understand this statement. A storage device, e.g., Roon, that delivers bits to a dCS buffer, does not have a “sound quality.” It’s like a person saying they changed their hard drive and now everything sounds better.
If the bits are delivered accurately to the buffer–and the Ethernet protocol ensures that they are–the sound, as we perceive it, is created by the DSP of the DAC, and then through the DAC–>speaker chain.
Many on this forum use Roon to Bartok, Rossini and Vivaldi. If you prefer another server, as many do, that’s great and enjoy.
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it’s just my finding- roon SQ is crap vs upnp in my setup. Apart from this, if one is not hearing a difference: try a dedicated audio NAS system vs roon. Even stereophile confiremed that when testing Innuos Statement.
Fun: changing the hard drive and now it sounds better…Melco demo’ed exactly that: Melco with their SSD vs Melco with standard SSD. The SQ improvements were quite obvious 
add on: apart from that, in that demo they showed the SQ improvements of a better USB cable just for ripping (CD ripper to NAS)…that was awesome! After that demo I used a Tellurium Q Silver for ripping (had to rip my CD again of course…)
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Another point of view from a member here.
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Sorry, not in my system- I think there’s claim somewhere that there is no SQ difference btw. powercables or Ethernet cables…
Ethernet cables: Correct. dCS is also on the record stating there is no difference in SQ with Ethernet cables, provided they are unshielded spec cables.
Power cables: different story for many reasons.
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" in that demo they showed the SQ improvements of a better USB cable just for ripping (CD ripper to NAS)…that was awesome! "
If there is a change, then it merely shows their equipment is faulty.
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Also this discussion of comparison of upnp versus Roon is rather hilarious. Given they work in totally different ways.
upnp typically (at least on dCS and Naim) pulls the entire track immediately to local buffer within the player. You can check this easily – start playing a upnp track, and then pull out the ethernet cable half way through the track. Now if you think the ethernet cable changes the sound, ponder how this can be when it is unplugged from the player… unless it is mechanical coupling of vibration onto the motherboard via the socket, or ongoing RF interference injection – both of which would indicate weak design
Roon does real-time streaming of the data, because it has clock information required to keep multiple end-points in sync playing the same track. Which is obviously an entirely different data pattern.