Roon 1.3

[Cable Monkey]

After its most recent update, Roon seems to have come of age. It now includes options to upsampling to DSD which seems to work well for the bitstream DAC's out there. It allows adjustment for speaker delay to go with its new surround capability and now includes the ability to take the readings from REW for room correction. Those that have the ability to compare still reckon the specialist software like Audirvana and HQPlayer may have an edge in SQ terms but it is closer now. Much closer. One thing that is now apparent is that the power the Room team said you needed, a minimum i3, is more relevant for day to day use. However I am pretty sure Celeron based systems with modest local libraries should still be able to use upsampling to higher PCM rates and use the room correction without too much trouble. That said, my i5 NUC runs 25-30% CPU upsampling to DSD 128, the upper limits of what my Black Dragon DAC presently accepts. 

On the road map for further 1.3 builds is software decoding of MQA and ROCK which is their lightweight dedicated Roon operating system, Roon Optimised Core Kit both of which I am looking forward to.

 

[dudywoxer]

I think some of the computer specs are a bit more special than is really neccesary. I run the core on a normal, comparatively slow spinning disc, with the library on a separate just as slow drive, the system cpu is  old quad core athlon, 2.8 or 3.0 ghz I think, and a huge 8 mb of ram. It runs on windows 10. At the same time as streaming roon out to 2 endpoints, it is acting as a fax, and file and print sever for 3 other users. I have not tried upsamplin yet, as to be honest I can not see the point. Most of my music files or flac ripped from CD, and polishing a turd comes to mind. Even when the pc is running backups on the music, pictures and document drives, playing via roon on the core pc, and streaming to a end point, I have not seen more than 40% cpu usage. Athough it is a athlon so temperatures rise. 

I am not sure if Roon are trying to ensure long hardware life for new build systems, or over emphasising the requirements for audiophool reasons, but if you have a old pc kicking about it may very well run roon, and it is worth giving it a go.

 

[Cable Monkey]

I can't disagree, if all you want to do is run Roon then you do not need the latest spec computer, and I have heard of good results with a modern Celeron and I have even run it myself on a Maple Trail based tablet with embedded RAM and embedded memory (PiPO X9S). But if you are interested in the new features such as room correction and DSP then it is worth a look, or a second look if you have already had a trial. What I can say is that in my various experiments PC performance can enhance the user experience and if that matters then it may be worth the effort. My findings were that it doesn't enhance sound quality as such, in fact Roon are consistent in their assertion that they get the sound from a to b with no tweaking and with the destination DAC as master so there are no audiophool claims in that respect. However I am happy with the DSP, and wether polishing a turd, putting lipstick on a pig or getting worthwhile improvement, it is part of the package and you have little to lose trying it!

 

[aswillman]

Mine is running fine on a lowly Mac Mini i5 1.4GHz with 8GB . I assume the DSD only works with a computer to DAC? I have a second Mac Mini on bridge duties (as it's spare) but may convert it to standalone use if I can upsample to DSD.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Cable Monkey]

All the work is done by the host machine, but you can then bridge across the network to another with a USB DAC. The other machine uses very little resource.