I am from the Netherlands, I know them well, haha
Iām an engineer! (though, admittedly, not a very good oneā¦) What else can you expect?! ; )
More seriously, Iām honestly trying to understand why this would be so. It would seem to me that buffering would eliminate any of these issues, but clearly folks have different opinions about this, which I respect.
1 Like
Digital is not 1 or 0ā¦. it is voltage on a cable that has to be interpreted as 1 or 0 
.
3 Likes
I am also an engineer (mechanical).
There are so many influencing factors in hifi that I stopped trying to find all the answers. But in general separates, pre amp and monoblocks sound better then an integrated amp, I would think the same applies to streamer/DAC. Thatās also why a Vivaldi stack will perform better then the Rossini.
I know when I first heard about Roon it sounded like something that didnāt need to be a subscription. They donāt provide any actual music and it sounded like it was just a softward interface that should be able to run locally.
I have a general aversion to things like Photoshop and office moving to a subscription model because it feels like the company is trying to get more money out of me for the same thing I used to buy once.
With Roon you have to dig a bit deeper to understand the āserviceā part of the software. Even in use itās not always obvious. I think this is always going to make it a bit of a tough sell. Especially when you consider your Qobuz subscription gives you millions of tracks of music for the same price as a Roon subscription, which gives youā¦metadata and a pretty GUI?
1 Like
Good question 
Please read this, to give you at least the beginning of understanding of what Roon actually offers:
1 Like
Why do you seek a technical explanation? In order to be convinced that it then might be worth hearing some options? Or so that you can shoot down any theory offered without listening?
I ask because there was recently a rather long and increasingly ill-tempered thread on another forum about network switches where a handful of theorists rejected every possible theory offered and steadfastly declined invitations to hear for themselves (āno need, youāre imagining thingsā). It would be a pity if this thread went the same way.
For what itās worth, a major sticking block on that thread was theorists refusing to see the world through anything other than a digital lens. There is some rubbish spouted by some manufacturers about clock accuracy in the ethernet domain having an impact on sound quality which we (including dCS) know it canāt. Ethernet and buffering ensure that all the bits arrrive in the right order, no data errors occur, no bits are somehow magically enhanced. The only rational explanation for a streamer or switch making a difference is in the analogue domain ie. RFI/EMI noise which ultimatley reaches the analogue componentry of a DAC.
Cue theorists saying why this canāt possibly happen and those who have experienced it asserting that it most definitely does. Please, please, not here!
2 Likes
Folks donāt just have different opinions. Some of them have different experiences.
Iām not a Roon user myself but know of a few ex-users now, due to the sound quality drawbacks mentioned above.
No good reason. Itās just meā¦ ; )
āThe pursuit of knowledge is more important than its possession.ā
4 Likes
To be fair Iām not sure I am fully an āexā Roon user but I am a certainly a rare user despite my lifetime license (bought many years ago before there were any price rises). In point of fact only last night I listened to two whole tracks using Roon before deciding that life was too short to put up with the inferior sound.
Itās not all about you!
Ok, it is. Nick tuned me into the potential issue and since then Iāve seen others express similar views.
Speak soon!
Using Rossini + clock I hear no easily identifiable sonic differences between Roon (using a Rock) and Mosaic with files on a NAS. Lucky me.
4 Likes
Indeed.
Since dCS has stated everything is buffered, and no one has come forth with a credible technical reason why or how a server providing the same bits could impact the Ring DAC post-buffer, Iām attributing this to āexpectation bias.ā
Iām sure itās just meā¦
2 Likes
If you hear Roon v. A.N. Other and hear no difference we now know that this must be due to expectation bias as you have already decided that there can be none .
1 Like