Article: Roon Vs. JRiver | Clash of the Titans

[Mike Rubin]

Long time since there was a post on this thread. 

 

I have been trying Roon despite my misgivings about its price because it can stream files converted to DSD256 on the fly, for which my two DACs (Topping D90 and W4S 10th Anniversary) are said to be optimized.  JRiver, which I have used for at least a decade, can do that locally over the host computer's USB using ASIO but it can't stream it over the network on DLNA. 

 

I have found that, even before file conversion, Roon sounds remarkably good in its RAAT native form.  The best way to describe it on my system is that the midrange and upper bass are more present and the high end is less prone to the brightness that I find fatiguing in many records with flutes, oboes, and high C trumpets. Converting the files and messing with the headroom management yields even better sound most of the time - presence is even more pronounced - but I also have found that it also sometimes compresses the music. Luckily, you can enable and disable the headroom and conversion capabilities on the fly.  

 

What I am coming to despise about Roon is the interface and inadequacy of the metadata. I own my music rather than get it from Tidal or Qobuz, so that's the context in which I offer these comments. 

 

I love that JRiver makes it so easy to edit metadata because I have some idiosyncratic tagging habits. (As an example, all of my seemingly thousands of Miles Davis and John Coltrane records have Miles Davis as both artist and album artist because I don't want to sort through separate "quartet," "quintet," "sextet," "+19," or similar listings when I am looking for something by "Miles Davis.") I also like to append "[24-44] or "[DSD]" where applicable to the title, often because I continue to keep Redbook versions of the same albums when they have bonus tracks that don't appear in the hi-res. 

 

Roon will allow me to override its metadata with my own as a default, but, even then, the displayed information on the Roon screen divides itself into "Miles Davis," "Miles Davis Quartet," "Miles Davis Quintet," etc.  Usually, this is due to tags, so I have to disable them manually.  At that point, Roon continues to display the now-empty "Quartet," "Quintet," etc., fields, cluttering up the screen. Also, before I learned to override the Roon-provided data with my own, it commingled the multiple versions of the albums.  JRiver also will if do that, if you don't give the albums unique names, but Roon did that even with unique names until I messed with the settings to prevent that. 

 

I like Roon's display of credits for albums, but, it is primitive.  I have a lot of independent and foreign jazz for which Roon has no metadata or credits at all.  For albums on which it does have credits, it does not provide track number references like those you'd find on an album cover, so there will be three pianists, two bassists, and two drummers just lumped together on lots of jazz albums.  Without Googling, I can't tell who's playing at the moment. If I still need to Google while listening, anyway, I don't enjoy paying a data access charge to Roon for information that is free on the web, especially since I have to be connected to the network, anyway, just to play music at all. 

 

I could go on, but these are the most significant reasons why I find Roon's interface unpleasant to use in my system, with my display preferences. So, for me, the question is whether it's worth $120 a year for the SQ improvements.  It may just be. (The $699 lifetime membership is a non-starter for me because I am 70 years old.)  

 

Whether or not I sign up for an annual Roon subscription, I will keep JRiver for both ease of metadata editing and for the few times I need to stream to a phone, tablet, or TV over DLNA. Contrary to what some folks on this thread suggest, it will cost you only about $20 for the annual upgrade and, as with Roon, in-version upgrades are free until the next version becomes available.  Even if support is terse, I appreciate JRiver's businesslike nature, ability to install on multiple server devices per platform, and flexibility. It is within a few percent of Roon on sound quality, as well, although it's seeking that last few percent that makes us audiophile loons. 

 

Your mileage may vary, of course. 

[Mike Rubin]

Agree completely, Kal. 

 

For jazz and, especially, classical, Roon's user experience is vastly overrated. I routinely find erroneous album identification; lack of identification at all even when the album is in the database;  tons of albums without useful data in the database; and incredibly poor and inflexible handling of box sets or multi-composer albums. 

 

If you have ten versions of "Le Petit Soldat" or "Tzigane" or any non-US or independent jazz, your experience is going to be a lot worse than if your collection predominantly features Diana Krall or the Eagles. 

 

I *hate* that I can't associate a file extension with Roon so that I can play a newly-downloaded file without having to import it into the database first. 

 

I don't care for how Roon uses screen space, but, admittedly that is subjective.  

 

Add that the forums are filled with Thought Police who brook zero dissent about Roon's divinity and I feel like a voice in the wilderness when I express a contrary opinion there. 

 

All that said, I probably will renew my Roon subscription this summer.  I have time invested in edits even though I continue to do the bulk of my database management in JRiver.  I can create playlists in Roon by label without having to add a "label" field to my ten tons of music file metadata.  Much more importantly, I only stream and don't play over the control computer's USB ports, and RAAT is superb for that use case. Roon finds every device in my house, connects easily to each, and stays connected.

 

Of greatest significance to me, my DACs and ears like DSD256 playback.  JRiver can stream that natively but it can't upsample a network stream to DSD.  Audirvana can upsample a stream to DSD256, but it has quirks when it does and runs my CPU much hotter than does Roon.  Roon thus sounds better than JRiver and works more reliably than Audirvana in my systems when playing back as I prefer. 

 

If JRiver could stream everything as DSD256, I would just use it and be done with Roon and Audirvana. Its unwillingness or inability to engineer that capability, however, means I generally use Roon for playback because I like what is under its hood.  I don't prefer Roon's business model, but they have gotten me hooked to that extent.