This guy tested Grimm, Innuos and HZ as roon core(!)- imho the results are really interesting!
Even on youtube, you can spot the difference (not sure if he does some upsample etc)
On this forum I would say half feel Mosaic sounds better than Roon, while the other half feels things sound the same.
I have no idea who this youtuber is however I will be interested in reading some of the inbound comments from those technically more astute than I am.
If one is in the camp of Mosaic sounding the same as Roon, I would think all Roon Cores should sound the same?
I have not seen the video (yet).
Now, if all devices are driving the DAC by something else than Ethernet (and even here reclocking feature might be hearable), then it is no longer a Roon-core comparison, but a streamer/Roon-endpoint comparison…
…and there are known differences one can hear in this case…
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[quote=“Erwan, post:3, topic:7609”]
if all devices are driving the DAC by something else than Ethernet
[/quote] etc.
As an aside I will add that if the players under test are connected by different cables ( even of the same brand and model) this can also cause sonic differences and can be easily overlooked when making comparisons.
I’m listening to the video just on my tablet.
I prefer the Hz core the most, followed by the Mu1 and Zenith.
I heard the Hz being nice and smooth, especially in the top end, and voices.
The voices certainly sounded more natural.
Using google to translate the Chinese comments of the video: it’s a mixed-bag comparison…
For the Grimm Mu1, the AES/EBU connection is used, for another Streamer it’s USB, for another it’s…
In brief, it’s rather comparing the different connection types of the DAC, more than anything else. And it’s definitely NOT comparing Roon Cores.
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Without diving into the technical aspects, or pretending to be an expert on the topic, I think it is worth considering the below statement from Andrew, a former technical lead at dCS, in 2019 on this forum:
Knowing that all incoming data enters into a buffer inside the DAC, what could be the possible mechanism that the same bits from a different server would sound differently in the analog output stage of the DAC?
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But they’re not the same bits going into the DAC!
Erwan is spot on; the different interfaces used is a clue that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison of Roon’s performance on different servers.
For example, the Grimm Audio MU-1 uses Roon as the bit stream transport, however, the Roon stream is terminated internally and the bits are processed on Grimm’s FPGA (Upsampled, Filtered, and I2S to AES converted), before being sent to the DAC via AES.
IMHO, don’t waste your time trying to analyse this video.
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agreed, they do not measure the same…