I have had it with Roon, their lack of support, their user forum, and it's users...

[austinpop]

I had the same experience in the Roon forums as you, @AudioDoctor, and left in disgust. Life's too short for that nonsense.

 

All one has to do is to listen to alternatives, like Stylus on Euphony OS, or HQPlayer 4 Desktop playing files directly, and the case is made.

 

I had a simple request to the Roon team. "Conduct listening tests on your competition." But one can't just go to them directly and ask them. No, you have to post on their forum, and then endure  the taunts and insults of the peanut gallery.

 

I accept my lifetime subscription is a sunk cost, but I do use Roon for noncritical listening and music discovery on Qobuz. Their UI and UX are excellent. Pity about the SQ.

[austinpop]

In defense of @AudioDoctor

 

To experience the inferiority of Roon's SQ to other players, all you have to do is listen. Here're my data points:

1. the first inkling of trouble in paradise came in June 2018, when I tried the "Experimental Mode" on my Innuos Zenith SE, where Innuos routed the audio stream from Roon Core to Squeezelite. The SQ improvement was obvious.
2. Then in May 2019, when I switched to the Euphony OS, I found the Stylus player to run circles around Roon. In an attempt to enable Roon functionality with Stylus SQ, the developer implemented a player called StylusEP, that presented itself to Roon as an HQPlayer instance. While this helped, it did not close the gap with Stylus.
3. In August 2020, when I got the Taiko Extreme, my initial hope was that Emile's magic would allow Roon SQ to be competitive again, and my plan was to use Roon > HQPlayer. But I soon discovered that I got much better SQ just using HQPlayer direct on Windows, compared to Roon > HQPlayer.
4. Finally, later in 2020, Taiko released their beta player TAS (Taiko Audio Server), whose SQ again was embarrassingly better than Roon. The entire raison d'etre for TAS was Roon's disappointing SQ, else there would have been no reason for Taiko to invest so much time, effort, and money on TAS.

There's no point in debating the why's and the how's. Just compare Roon with other options for yourself. If you don't hear a difference, be happy!

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, bobfa said:

My journey is following along the trail blazed by @austinpop.  

• Squeezelite was a first step
• Then a mix of AudioLinux, Euphony and more AudioLinux
• I built several hardware systems.  I had a custom server built for me.
• Now I am back to LMS and Squeezelite on Raspberry Pi.  (BOB IS HAPPY)

 

Yes, Bob, as you've experienced, music player software design and implementation does have an effect on SQ. This is what I and many others have been hoping of Roon: that they would make the SQ of their software a business and development priority. Clearly, they have other imperatives.

 

I've been consistent in my posts that functionally, I'm a big fan of Roon, despite the ever-growing complexity of their UI. The UX is still head and shoulders better than most other players. I still remember the day when, a few weeks after I got Roon ~5 years ago, I was able to get to OCD heaven — every album in my library was organized and had an album cover! It took some "expert" features of Roon to achieve, but it was a huge step up from the tag-based players out there, and it felt like a real milestone in my audio journey.

 

Ultimately, it depends on us, the consumers. Do other music players sound better on our systems? If so, the tradeoff between better SQ and worse UX is one we have to decide for ourselves. I have several friends who I've helped with their audio systems who aren't tweak-o-philes like us. For them, a slick user experience to enjoy their music far overshadows the benefit of squeezing (pun intended) out the last ounce of SQ. I still have them on Roon. Actually not quite. One of them recently opened Pandora's Box and tried Stylus (he was already on Euphony OS). Now he can't go back!

 

The main thing that I don't like is the implication, expressed by some on this thread, that if Roon say there is no SQ difference, then there is no SQ difference. This is AS. We decide for ourselves!

 

1 hour ago, bobfa said:

I have recently had an interesting experience helping a friend with his Antipodes DX2 3.1 software update.  I have never heard Roon sound so good.  His whole family was amazed.

 

In the case of the Antipodes server, while I personally have not experienced one, I have friends with K30 and K50 units. What they've told me is that the new 3.1 software update both enabled or refreshed other software players. They seem to be liking both MPD (yeah, old school!) and LMS/Squeezelite for SQ. It might be interesting to compare Roon on the DX2/3.1 with these other players to see what your friend thinks.