The problem is that Roon DSP settings make like a 5% difference if you are lucky.
Whereas Experimental mode makes like a 60% difference.
It’s not a fair fight as Experimental Mode cheats by skipping Roon playback altogether and uses RAM playback. Roon DSP is just software settings.
At the risk of saying something properly controversial it’s a lot to do with Roon caring more about gimmicks than sound quality. Compared to Innuos who have really paid attention to how to optimise the sound.
Experimental mode isn’t perfect as it’s buggy. If you change the playlist and skip tracks it doesn’t like it. But in my ever humble opinion that’s totally worth it as it gives you the best of both worlds. The great Roon UI and magazine feel, but bypassing the poor SQ that sadly Roonlabs have decided is acceptable.
Dont want to ruin your Christmas but I wrote to them after your last post. The tech guy said the beta version goes out to dealers soon and that it would be available in “the spring”. I asked if I could be a beta tester… but no. I have tried lots of settings on Roon but they sound “different”.
dont know what I am doing.
Cant be bothered.
Hence the question was- what is the general opinion.
With the help of @bigalmc i have got squeezelite working and will stick with it until the innuos player comes out.
I am using SqueezeLite as well. I found Roon to be a no go. My source regarding the platform release from Innuos was Emmanuel, so we will hav eto wait and see what actually transpires. This platform has been promised several times over the last 18 months. Spring is no biggie IMO, but it would be nice to be considered for a Beta test. For now I am finding the Phoenix to be a great, if pricey, addition.
This is not all that controversial here. There are adherents that assert Roon is wonderful. There are others here, such as myself, who are not impressed with Roon’s sound. There are lots opinions.
FWIW I don’t think there are best settings in Roon. I think there are too many factors like your system, the source music etc.
It would be great if there was a magic recipe but I doubt it’s possible.
I played around a lot with PCM upsampling and converting to DSD etc. But the difference was always somewhere between undiscernible to very small. As for filters and headroom etc, who has the time for that.
I’m more than happy for someone to disagree and provide great Roon settings and I’ll happily give them a go. But as my previous posts have probably indicated I’m pretty annoyed at Roonlabs for not caring about sound quality. I have a Roon lifetime license and love the UI. But sadly us audiophiles are not their main target demographic and (to me at least) BS features like displaying lyrics are taking precedence over sound quality.
If someone, PS Audio for example with Octave, beat Roon then I’ll drop them in a heartbeat. But meantime Experimental Mode is the thing salvaging Roon for me and whilst that’s kudos to Innuos, it’s bloody annoying on the Roon front.
Sorry if I missed it, but what DAC are you feeding your “Roon files” to, and what type of input are you using to receive the data stream?
I ask these questions because, in my experience, Roon sounds best if I turn off all “DSP” functionality and feed an “unmolested” signal to my PSA DS DAC for D to A conversion. Then any adjustment to the sound is made post conversion by my preamplifier, amplifiers and speakers.
I could see an advantage if you want to use Roon as an equalizer on a desktop system or with headphones, but I really don’t appreciate/have any use for any of its DSP functions in front of my “Big Rig” DAC.
Octave is a streamer/server where Roon is a UI. Now you can loop in the Roon Nucleus but their bread and butter is UI. Octave will compete with companies like Aurender. As you know Octave is a closed system like Aurender.
Now the augment of Roon not caring about sound quality and audiophiles, etc. is your opinion. This tends to lean certain ways depending on which forum you are reading.
The great thing is one has plenty of options and can decide for themselves what works best for them.
Octave will have its own operating system and UI, but requires PS Audio hardware, like Bridge III, or the Octave Server, or the eventual Stellar Server. All will be based on Octave.
Select DS DAC as your Zone when Roon is open. Right click on the “icon”/depiction of the DS DAC zone. Select “DSP” from the drop down/window that opens and then go in and turn everything off for that Zone/for the DS DAC.
Could not agree more with the comments here. I use roon to improve the user interface of my music “make it simpler” and have to say it is now on the borderline with relation to expense compared to service. What I didnt expext was to have to go onto a forum to understand how to set up, or better said “optimise” the audio settings.
I wont be using it once the contract runs out and fingers crossed for the innuos platform.
I like roon for the most part. I’m using it with Qobuz and think it sounds fantastic with my little headless/fanless linux box that’s hard wired to my optical internet line. That little host has no other duties but to roon it up. I don’t think roon changes the Qobuz SQ. I gave up on having a big catalog of digital music. Too much of a headache.
I’ve played around with the DSP and sometimes switch it to on for fun and goof around, but most frequently (99%) let Mr. Ted’s magic do its thing.
Good evening. The point I was trying to make was that it is totally unclear what the user is actually doing in Roon. with the settings to “improve” or better said “change” the sound. Thank you for the advice everyone. I have installed squeeze lite and turned off everything in the DSP in Roon. This exercise reminds me a of a turned down version of HQplayer. Might be a great sound but you need either a degree in Astrophysics or lots of patience to understand how it works.