Roon audio corruption

[DWPress]

My system was sounding off to me recently and I had time after the holidays to go through and redo my (dsp) crossovers and alignment to subs. I even got a new (used) Motu M2 to upgrade my first gen 2i2 so new loopback to figure out and all sorts of fun bits on this adventure - such as reseting volume on some drivers resulted in blowing a fuse on a sub amp and an unplanned run to town.

Going through my usual approach with REW and rePhase and even decided to give DLBC another chance since the mics and stands were already out. On paper (screen) everything looked beautiful in REW, filters summed perfectly and very little EQ was needed at all with the new XOs and time alignment. I kept checking back with listening tests on favorite test tracks playing them from Roon as usual but everything sounded off. There was an accentuated treble with a slight reverb, sub bass disappeared and the mids were smeared. I kept trying different filters, removing IIR corrections, different virtual cable apps. So frustrating, especially since what I was looking at in REW with sweeps should have sounded great!

Finally today I fired up Apple Music. Problem solved, everything sounds awesome - back to Roon, terrible sound. I don't use any of Roon's built in DSP but double checked to make sure everything was disabled. Finally, I just uninstalled it and downloaded a fresh copy. I'm happy to say I'm playing local and streaming files again with perfect sound.

I've never had playback software corrupt a signal before. When we're doing DSP on a computer with lots of channels there's all kinds of places where things can go wrong. Oh well, I've got a half dozen new filter sets to listen to and subjectively evaluate now at least.

 

[Purité Audio]

Roon doesn’t’ corrupt’ the signal, amongst its features is a transparency ‘checker’ which lists every stage of the signals path.
Keith

 

[Keith_W]

Roon doesn’t’ corrupt’ the signal, amongst its features is a transparency ‘checker’ which lists every stage of the signals path.
Keith

I'm not sure about that. It is software, and all software can have gremlins. Here is an example of Roon screwing up: I generated a DSP filter for a 3-way system for a friend. He has an 8 channel DAC, so I set Roon up to output 8 channels. When I played music, there was no sound coming out the tweeter. I checked the .CFG file, and loaded it into JRiver. It worked fine, everything sounded normal. So I swapped out his DAC for my interface. I saw that Roon was sending output to channels 1, 2, 3, 4 ... and 7, 8. WHY ON EARTH IS IT DOING THAT! The .CFG file clearly says channels 1 to 6! So I set the mixer to route channels 7, 8 to channels 5, 6. It then worked normally.

Later I found out that you have to set Roon up to output to a 6 channel DAC, and not 8 channels. If you do that, it correctly routes channels. You can't tell Roon that your DAC has 8 channels and only use 6. I don't use Roon, so I didn't know this. I had to figure it out very quickly when I was in my friend's house. I wasted so much time, delayed his dinner, inconvenienced him, and annoyed my wife.

So yeah, I wouldn't put it beyond Roon to have some strange glitch that can be solved with a software reinstall. Maybe some registry setting was overwritten, you never know. I never place too much faith that something will work properly.

 

[Purité Audio]

Sounds like an RTFM issue.
Keith

 

[NTK]

Sounds like an RTFM issue.
Keith

Yeah, sounds like a winner strategy.

Warning to our valued customers:
Please make sure you read the manual in its entirety front to back before using our product. It is completely unintuitive. It is a feature. You only have yourself to blame if something doesn't work correctly.

 

[Purité Audio]

Damn manuals, we don’t need to know how the product works.
Keith

 

[NTK]

Damn manuals, we don’t need to know how the product works.
Keith

You think @Keith_W doesn't know how these kinds of products should behave and work in general?

 

[Keith_W]

You think @Keith_W doesn't know how these kinds of products should behave and work in general?

If he thinks that, he would be right!

You haven't seen me on the JRiver and RME forums asking stupid questions! I have a certain expectation on how software should work, based on my experience with other similar software. When it doesn't work as I think it should ... maybe it's me, maybe it's the UI. But that Roon thing is definitely the software's fault. If the CFG file says "route audio to channels 1 to 6", I do not expect it to ignore it and send audio to channels 7 and 8.

 

[DWPress]

I've been a Roon user for a few years now at least and have migrated computers at least once. The Roon Server and Bridge reside on the same machine so it's very possible for a registry to screw up somehow. But for Roon to suddenly start pooping out distortion after several days of pretty intense measurement sessions it was the last place I was looking for potential sound reproduction issues. I have no idea how it could have happened, I'm glad I got it sorted - hopefully I'm a unique case for the software corruption.

Like I said and Keith has inferred - all kinds of places things can go potentially wrong building filters for 8 channels especially when hand writing CFG files.