From the current Stereophile review of the Lina Dac and Lina Clock:
" So far, in my diverse DAC auditions, I’ve found dCS data delivery, operated by the Mosaic app, to result in music with what feels like a purer transparency than I get from my Mac mini or Roon Nucleus+"
I’d be interested in opinions on this and the theoretical rationale about streaming the same on-site file through Roon vs. Mosaic. I haven’t done blind A-B testing on this yet.
well well well…
Hello,
I’m a Roon enthusiast, but there’s clearly something wrong in the way some of its hidden settings may impact volume, hence perception of sound quality.
I noticed by the past that the volume of the exact same track was louder if played from Mosaic than from Roon.
I finally turned those two options “on” in Roon to get the same volume as Mosaic.
Hope this can help,
Erwan
Ok, if we disable any settings in Roon that might alter volume or anything else, and carefully match SPL the way would do if we were doing a careful blind A-B-X study of this, are there differences between the two?
Harry, this is a “do not touch” topic (kidding )
Many here confirm exactly your findings: Mosaic sounds “pure” more transparent, with air, without a veil vs Roon (I’m in that camp too)
Others say: no way, Roon is 100% transparent the way it handles music- there is no difference btw. Mosaic and Roon.
We had already many discussion here with folks I really appreciate - so in the end you decide what’s best for you.
I’m using Roon for convenience but Mosaic for “critical” listening
To me, with an AB-X testing (not AB, but real AB-X) there will be no difference.
Hope this can help,
Erwan
I put up a quote from the stereophile review, but I am struggling to hear any sonic differences between Roon and Mosaic if matched in volume, so my finding is no difference in sonics but I find Roon remarkably convenient.
have a look at this from Roon. Roon applies DSP when volume levelling. So not a great thing if you want your music flies delivered to your dCS dac ‘as is’
I’m going to do a bit of a turnaround on this after a couple of hours of non-blind a-b testing this morning. The same file streamed via upnp by Mosaic at the same volume sounds better in most cases than when it comes through Roon. I’m trying to figure out whether I have any Roon settings that are creating this issue. I still love the convenience of Roon. Also, to do this testing, I had to turn off a convolution filter in Roon that improves my LCD-5 headphones….so there is some trade-off and I will likely land back in Roon for most listening. Life can be rather complicated.
can’t find the exact link now but @Anupc illustrated that data from Roon is delivered bit perfectly to the DAC (as long as all dsp is off)
Just so I can get a better idea of the comparisons being made, is the signal path the same in both cases, in particular is Mosaic using a network connection ad Roon USB?
All academic for me as I do not have Roon but I am interested in your views.
I think so, but I need to make sure there aren’t any behind the scenes Roon settings I’m missing. I turned off volume leveling but the volume of the feed through mosaic sounds louder to me, which makes me a bit suspicious that I’m missing something.
Actually when these options aren’t set, Roon applies the same volume levelling of -14dB whatever the file metadata.
When those options are set, Roon applies the volume level as specified in the file metadata…
(For most of the files it’s -11dB if I recall well)
And in both cases Roon presents a bit-perfect path which is definitely misleading… And this is where I’m not very happy with Roon.
For the rest, as I said, I really enjoy it and almost never use Mosaic (but for changing a filter sometimes)
Eeek - i sure hope not!
I leave all replay gain functions OFF in Roon so data is passed ‘as is’ to my Bartok. I’ve even turned the audio analyzer function off the import setting as well - less stuff to balloon the roon data base.
So with all dsp and replay gain OFF, Roon is really just acting as a transporter, passing data through their RAAT protocol to the DAC.
That’s what everybody says…and I think I have all settings off (no volume leveling, no MUSE settings, import settings off, etc) yet I am still hearing some sonic differences between mosaic and Roon when they are accessing the exact same file from my sonictransporter i9. Thoughts?
Then give it a try, and check by yourself 
this is the link i was looking for. It appears we have the same topic running in two different threads. I have tried both Mosaic and Roon and I cant hear a difference!
Roon is not in the music path directly involved and Roon is bit perfect if DSP etc. switched off. 100% agreed here, it’s the given architecture how they work.
But two things drives me crazy when thinking about that (and I can hear a difference btw. Roon and Mosaic)
Apart from that- could it be that Mosaic uses a different music transfer protocol that makes the difference?
Anyway…I enjoy my music
Unlike Mosaic which is a UPnP Control Point and not in the path of music transport, Roon Is both a Control Point and a transport protocol and thus is directly in the path of the streaming music.
UPnP uses HTTP as its primary transport protocol, whereas Roon uses its own proprietary RAAT protocol.
However, while the two seemingly use different protocols, both HTTP and RAAT are actually built on the same standard basic transport protocol; TCP (albeit, HTTP can run on UDP or QUIC, but thats another long story).
The primary function of TCP is to deliver a stream of data packets between two end points, reliably; meaning, error-corrected and in the correct order, regardless of the underlying physical layer (which could be Copper Ethernet, Optical Ethernet, Serial PPP, ATM, Frame-Relay, Token Ring, X.25, etc etc etc., it’s designed to not matter).
UPnP and RAAT deliver music data streams In exactly the same way that you don’t really care how you download an Excel file from a Server on the network - via HTTP or FTP or SCP or WebDAV or a dozen other different protocols - the Excel file remains identical to its source file contained on the Server.
When the S800 board in your Vivaldi/Rossini/Bartok/Lina receives the music data streams, it literally doesn’t care whether they came via UPnP or RAAT, and from your home UPnP Server or Roon Server or even a Server on Amazon or CloudFlare or Akamai etc., the music data packets remain identical to what was contained on the Server regardless.
As for hearing differences, well, that’s for you to enjoy yourself
