Does Roon Sound Better?

[BDWoody]

In a controlled test different listeners would have to have identical equipment, heard in identical rooms and have identical hearing ability, with the only thing changing being the introduction of Roon.

Thank you for the rare rational reply! Cheers.

I would say that it is more about you controlling the listening you did to draw your conclusions by doing a full level matched (+/- .1db) and truly DBT methodology before making that kind of hard to easily 'scientifically' explain claim would be taken seriously. I'm not saying your lying, or that you are wrong... What I'm saying is that you won't know yourself if you don't implement controls to account for many different kinds of bias.

You say that most here would say my impression that Roon sounds better in my system, in my room and using my ears would be doubtful if a controlled listening test was done. Anticipating the results of a test that has not been done is not science.

If I said that when I put on my boxers instead of my briefs, that my system sounds better to me, would you doubt me? By asking for more than just my say so, are you being anti-science?

 

[Snarfie]

I do not use Roon because I had a trial, during which I confirmed that its metadata for classical music are disastrously useless. I use the Windows version of Foobar under Windows, Linux, and, yes, Mac, using Wine for compatibility with the latter two OSs. It sounds excellent, and I can get native DSD out even with Wine (although it doesn't matter).

So can we conclude Roon & Foobar have 2 different sound signaturs?.

 

[Soniclife]

So can we conclude Roon & Foobar have 2 different sound signaturs?.

Not if they are setup to deliver the same data.

 

[arancano]

The second post in this thread literally states that Amir tested the Roon signal path with his AP analyzer and that it made no difference. That's a scientific test.

You would need quite strong evidence to dispute that test and claim there is something audible that is outside the AP's capability.

There are those who take measurements very seriously. Then there are others who feel measurements do not tell the whole story and what we hear is what counts. I'm with the second camp. I go to live concerts 2-3 times a week, mostly classical and jazz. My basis for judging a piece of music reproduction equipment is how realistic the music it produces matches my live experiences. Ultimately, all that matters is that a piece of equipment brings me closer to my live experience. I have no vested interest in defending Roon or anything else.

 

[Sancus]

There are those who take measurements very seriously. Then there are others who feel measurements do not tell the whole story and what we hear is what counts. I'm with the second camp. I go to live concerts 2-3 times a week, mostly classical and jazz. My basis for judging a piece of music reproduction equipment is how realistic the music it produces matches my live experiences. Ultimately, all that matters is that a piece of equipment brings me closer to my live experience. I have no vested interest in defending Roon or anything else.

You're not going to find much purchase for these sorts of arguments on this forum, I'm afraid.

 

[arancano]

You're not going to find much purchase for these sorts of arguments on this forum, I'm afraid.

It's ok. I'm not looking to sell anything or for validation. I simply want to express a point of view.

 

[Soniclife]

There are those who take measurements very seriously. Then there are others who feel measurements do not tell the whole story and what we hear is what counts.

People in the first group can also be in the second, it's just that they are likely to insist on level matched ears only comparisons for listening tests. When you have results from a controlled listening test that shows a difference were very interested, but sighted tests have no value to us.

 

[arancano]

People in the first group can also be in the second, it's just that they are likely to insist on level matched ears only comparisons for listening tests. When you have results from a controlled listening test that shows a difference were very interested, but sighted tests have no value to us.

I appreciate the difference in approaches and it's interesting to me to see how the approach for most in this forum differs from mine. I'm always looking to learn and there's nothing that promotes learning more than how we see things differently.

 

[BDWoody]

People in the first group can also be in the second, it's just that they are likely to insist on level matched ears only comparisons for listening tests. When you have results from a controlled listening test that shows a difference were very interested, but sighted tests have no value to us.

Indeed. While my imagined differences happened to disappear when I went through the surprisingly tedious and harder to do than sounds level matched DBT methodology, I do not dogmatically state that no one can hear them. But, differences heard aren't going to be in the 'wife could hear the difference from the kitchen' types...unless something is truly broken...

Edit: for those who have doubts but have never gone through the trouble of setting up a level matched DBT...it's worth doing. It opened my eyes in a way nothing anybody said could compete with.
It pulls away the curtain...

 

[Soniclife]

I appreciate the difference in approaches and it's interesting to me to see how the approach for most in this forum differs from mine. I'm always looking to learn and there's nothing that promotes learning more than how we see things differently.

Doing my first DBT was probably the biggest learning experience in hi-fi, I highly recommend it.

 

[Dialectic]

So can we conclude Roon & Foobar have 2 different sound signaturs?.

Yes, in Roon, I can't find what I want to listen to, and in Foobar, I can.

So they sound totally different.

 

[captain paranoia]

There are those who take measurements very seriously.

Maybe you misunderstand the measurements Amir did on Roon; he got Roon to play a digital file, and recorded the digital output of Roon with the AP. The recorded file was a bit true copy of the file he had got Roon to play. Roon made absolutely no changes to the file; it reproduced the file bit-true. Any other player that delivers a file bit true to a DAC will sound the same as Roon. Any differences you hear are purely down to your expectation bias/imagination.

The reason Amir did this test was to reassure himself that Roon could be trusted to be utterly transparent as a means of sending test signal files to DACs under test; that it would not influence the measurements in any way.

If the playback is not bit-true, then the player (be it Roon or some other) must be modifying the digital file (applying some filtering, room EQ, DSP effect, volume control, volume compression, etc). If you have any such effects enabled, you are comparing those effects; it is entirely possible for you to prefer the sound created by those effects, but that is your subjective preference. You are perfectly free to hold that preference for a particular coloured sound.

 

[captain paranoia]

I have always thought that a big part of the problem for audiophiles and magazines is that they have [n]ever managed to accept that digital isn't like analogue and all of the tweaking and adjustment that was useful or necessary in the vinyl era isn't anymore. So they end up trying to imagine that there are dark secrets in digital data streams and that software is like a tone arm or cartridge or something.

An old post, but I think it's a very astute observation, that, to me, explains these odd beliefs; they simply don't understand digital systems.