Roon 1.3 Major Update Coming Today

Upsampling redbook to 24/176 is sounding much better in Roon->HQP->NAA than Roon->RoonReady (both to microRendu). Piano color is realisitic with HQP, female voices natural. Roon upsampling is sounding both veiled AND strident.

But I'm loving v1.3 otherwise!

Upsampling redbook to 24/176 is sounding much better in Roon->HQP->NAA than Roon->RoonReady (both to microRendu). Piano color is realisitic with HQP, female voices natural. Roon upsampling is sounding both veiled AND strident.

 

But I'm loving v1.3 otherwise!

If you put HQP aside do you think that Roon up-sampling from PCM is better than just PCM playback?

If you put HQP aside do you think that Roon up-sampling from PCM is better than just PCM playback?

Have not tried, but will. However, given that most DACs upsample internally, this is going to be very DAC dependant.

I get a similar thing, TIDAL playback with DSP upsampling gives distorted playback and sometimes just stops. Local files are fine. I'm in the UK also.

Actually, scratch those comments. It is doing it on local files now, but I have turned the background analysis up to full speed to speed the job up, so that could be the cause as it was working fine on local files before. Better to assess once the background scan has completed.

DSP upsampling works fine with both local and TIDAL, including MQA files, so it must have been the background analysis at full speed that was causing the issue.

I used Roon for a year and then gave up on it. Access to Tidal and my 3tb collection in a single screen was great, but I found the interface quite irritating. I went back the MC and the Tidal app. The features of v 1.3 are impressive, but many of them are of little interest to me. I would really appreciate someone giving a thorough comparison of the new to the old interface. There is a claim for faster searches, which is a start, but the first version felt like an impediment between me and the music that I knew I should have easy access to.

I used Roon for a year and then gave up on it. Access to Tidal and my 3tb collection in a single screen was great, but I found the interface quite irritating. I went back the MC and the Tidal app. The features of v 1.3 are impressive, but many of them are of little interest to me. I would really appreciate someone giving a thorough comparison of the new to the old interface. There is a claim for faster searches, which is a start, but the first version felt like an impediment between me and the music that I knew I should have easy access to.

The interface is exactly the same.

Search is approximately 10x faster, which makes a big difference with my underpowered Mac Mini (2011).

Have not tried, but will. However, given that most DACs upsample internally, this is going to be very DAC dependant.

Indeed . Some dacs like the Yggy sound better when the software is not doing any upsampling .

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Anyone using headroom and, if so, why would one employ this?

Anyone using headroom and, if so, why would one employ this?

Any time you're using DSP (especially equalizer), you have the potential to boost signal up to (or past) clipping threshold.

"Headroom" is to allow a few dBs of headroom so that you don't clip the output.

I found it useful when employing even mild Parametric Eq - I actually reduced gain on the Eq by 1dB, but still needed another 1dB of headroom in the Headroom section to completely avoid clipping.

Any time you're using DSP (especially equalizer), you have the potential to boost signal up to (or past) clipping threshold.

 

"Headroom" is to allow a few dBs of headroom so that you don't clip the output.

 

I found it useful when employing even mild Parametric Eq - I actually reduced gain on the Eq by 1dB, but still needed another 1dB of headroom in the Headroom section to completely avoid clipping.

If I'm up sampling, would you recommend using it?

If I'm up sampling, would you recommend using it?

I'm certainly no expert, but I suspect PCM upsampling probably isn't risky that way.

If you're upsampling to DSD, though, take advantage of the dB offset in the Upsampling section, because DSD is especially susceptible to issues here (if you put in the offset in the DSD section, you don't *also* have to include it in "Headroom", though).

I'm certainly no expert, but I suspect PCM upsampling probably isn't risky that way.

 

If you're upsampling to DSD, though, take advantage of the dB offset in the Upsampling section, because DSD is especially susceptible to issues here (if you put in the offset in the DSD section, you don't *also* have to include it in "Headroom", though).

Looks like I am wrong:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/clipping-indicator-when-only-upsampling/20143

I tried the upsampling feature over the weekend, using the "Max PCM" selection. I have an Acoustic Plan DAC that doesn't do any upsampling on its own, nor does it do DSD. I found that while the upsampling seemed to increase the image density, it also dulled the music line. I found the same results when I tried HQ player with Roon. In my rig, sticking to the native sampling rate seems to work best. IMHO, FWIW. -- David

I tried the upsampling feature over the weekend, using the "Max PCM" selection. I have an Acoustic Plan DAC that doesn't do any upsampling on its own, nor does it do DSD. I found that while the upsampling seemed to increase the image density, it also dulled the music line. I found the same results when I tried HQ player with Roon. In my rig, sticking to the native sampling rate seems to work best. IMHO, FWIW. -- David

Thanks for the info. This stuff is really system dependent and listener dependent.

In my rig, sticking to the native sampling rate seems to work best. IMHO, FWIW. -- David

Yes, I have drawn the same conclusion. My main DAC is a Chord DAVE which upsamples internally and seems best left to what it was designed for with no external intervention.

Thanks for the info. This stuff is really system dependent and listener dependent.

Very much so, and quite amusing at times to observe all the differences of opinion that exist. One thing I find interesting when people talk about sound quality is the difference between accuracy and preference - the two are not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes less accuracy and even subtle distortions can be perceived as sounding better. This is one reason why people invariably disagree over sound quality.

That's disappointing, but thanks for the response and updates Chris (invaluable service to the community, as always). For the moment, I shall remain on the fence....

According to the guys at Roon, MQA support is coming and they've been waiting for MQA to provide some details to them because Roon works differently with these files than other programs.

I never had much success with up-sampling in the past (and had stopped trying in recent years). However I did play with the "Max PCM" feature for a bit last night and to my pleasant surprise, the up-sampling with Roon (from 44.1->384, 96->384; 16 & 24 bit to 32bit) actually gave good result. Definitely not a wow factor but it does took out the last bit of graininess in my system and the overall tonality smooth out a bit. I haven't tried DSD but with PCM, it worked out in my system.

It never hurts to ask. I'll check.

Hi Chris... is there any feedback from Roon Labs on this?

Hi Chris... is there any feedback from Roon Labs on this?

It's a no go.

It's a no go.

OK - Thanks for asking and updating us.

Oh my - this is really where Roon should have been in the first place.

-Paul

I am about to try Roon for the first time.

Is It true that It can take days to index all of my music? JRiver tells me I have 95822 files (or about 5TB worth of music). What should I expect?

Thanks!

I am about to try Roon for the first time.

 

Is It true that It can take days to index all of my music? JRiver tells me I have 95822 files (or about 5TB worth of music). What should I expect?

 

Thanks!

There is a setting that controls this. If you leave it at the default setting (throttled) then it can take a long time.

You can change the setting at Settings > Library > Background Audio Analysis Speed

My computer has 4 cores which what my setting is. It still takes time but probably hours and not days.

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I am about to try Roon for the first time.

 

Is It true that It can take days to index all of my music? JRiver tells me I have 95822 files (or about 5TB worth of music). What should I expect?

 

Thanks!

I understand it depends upon the CPU power, the Internet Speed, and whether or not your files include full metadata. But I would suggest on a modern hefty serve machine, you are more in the hours range than days.

-Paul