Roon - the next step?

[amabrok]

Guys help me out, am I getting crazy or what?!

For the sake of staying with Roon I was ready to trade my beautifully sounding Aurender to a Roon Nucleus or Innuos Zenith. I was this close, but then last night I noticed that my Aurender appears as a Roon end point, albeit on Airplay. so I gave it a try and to my biggest surprise it sounded better than Roon on Air/Wifi! I was always under the impression that Airplay is an average wireless audio transmission protocol with bandwidth limitation and accordingly has a negative impact on signal path and hence sound quality. in Roon, signal path from the core all the way to my D400 through Aurender/Airplay appears with a green dot indicating "High Quality" and not a the purple dot that indicates an all "Lossless" path with Roon on Air/Wifi

I realize that I need to do some more rigorous testing but the initial finding took me by surprise. Has any of you tried Roon over Airplay? And what was the experience like?

Another recent advent as well makes me wanna stick with my Aurender is the release of an MQA decoding software. Now the Aurender X100 can unfold MQA files and send them as HiRes PCM with sampling rates of 88.2 or 96Khz and bit depth of 24 or 32 to my D400. With the ever growing MQA library on Tidal this can't get any better and the initial feel of the sound quality is impressive on the direct USB audio connection.

[petrik]

@amabrok: It's interesting and a surprise to me that you have found AirPlay sounding so good. There are couple of good links in a following thread that are worth reading:
https://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=5028

[Confused]

@amabrok: It's interesting and a surprise to me that you have found AirPlay sounding so good. There are couple of good links in a following thread that are worth reading:
https://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=5028

Maybe not.  OK, AirPlay does have protocol limitations when compared, say, to Roon RAAT, but the implementation is important also.  The link above is to a comment from myself regarding CI board AirPlay, but in contrast I have used AirPlay (Shareport AirPlay emulator) via both the microRendu and sMS-200Ultra, the latter two actually sound very good.  As good as Roon RAAT?  No.  But the difference is relatively small.  If done well, AirPlay with 16/44.1 material can sound good.  So maybe what @amabrok is discovering is that Aurender has done a very good job with their AirPlay implementation.

[amabrok]

@amabrok: It's interesting and a surprise to me that you have found AirPlay sounding so good. There are couple of good links in a following thread that are worth reading:
https://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=5028

Maybe not.  OK, AirPlay does have protocol limitations when compared, say, to Roon RAAT, but the implementation is important also.  The link above is to a comment from myself regarding CI board AirPlay, but in contrast I have used AirPlay (Shareport AirPlay emulator) via both the microRendu and sMS-200Ultra, the latter two actually sound very good.  As good as Roon RAAT?  No.  But the difference is relatively small.  If done well, AirPlay with 16/44.1 material can sound good.  So maybe what @amabrok is discovering is that Aurender has done a very good job with their AirPlay implementation.

Thanks @petrik

Thanks @Confused. I believe your comment makes sense

With the near perfect implementation of almost every aspect of the Aurender I'm not surprised if it is the same with Airplay.

I will continue testing it and report back any further findings.

Sent from my LG-H930 using Tapatalk

[cereal killer]

Guys help me out, am I getting crazy or what?!

For the sake of staying with Roon I was ready to trade my beautifully sounding Aurender to a Roon Nucleus or Innuos Zenith. I was this close, but then last night I noticed that my Aurender appears as a Roon end point, albeit on Airplay. so I gave it a try and to my biggest surprise it sounded better than Roon on Air/Wifi! I was always under the impression that Airplay is an average wireless audio transmission protocol with bandwidth limitation and accordingly has a negative impact on signal path and hence sound quality. in Roon, signal path from the core all the way to my D400 through Aurender/Airplay appears with a green dot indicating "High Quality" and not a the purple dot that indicates an all "Lossless" path with Roon on Air/Wifi

I realize that I need to do some more rigorous testing but the initial finding took me by surprise. Has any of you tried Roon over Airplay? And what was the experience like?

Another recent advent as well makes me wanna stick with my Aurender is the release of an MQA decoding software. Now the Aurender X100 can unfold MQA files and send them as HiRes PCM with sampling rates of 88.2 or 96Khz and bit depth of 24 or 32 to my D400. With the ever growing MQA library on Tidal this can't get any better and the initial feel of the sound quality is impressive on the direct USB audio connection.

Hi - Since reading your findings i experimented with Devialet AIR v Apple Airplay. I have managed to replicate the functionality of your Aurender X100 with my 2TB SSD QNAP TS251+ NAS which has also indicated the green dot verse the purple dot. The differences for me have been extremely subtle at best, but them again the systems fully hardwired via CAT7.... I've never used WiFi with my Expert 220 Pro CI.

The green dot says 'high quality' which to me does not necessarily represent a bit perfect lossless audio.
The purple dot says 'lossless' which to me means this is a bit perfect audio path.

I'm not convinced Apple Airplay is better than AIR, the main difference for me was the output level. To test this i enabled both Inputs in roon as different endpoints/rooms and set the volumes as close as possible to each other then flicked between. They sounded Identical to me.... but i found Airplay had somehow limited the volume/output which obviously reduces headroom and dynamics. For me Devialet AIR is the winner, but maybe the ethernet connection is producing a fundamental difference?

Can i ask why are you using WiFi instead of Ethernet?

[cereal killer]

I have found a work around, it'll play 24/192 via Wired Airplay but not Devialet AIR.

I highly doubt that Airplay is sending 24/192 to the Devialet. 
For what I know, when using AirPlay everything is mixed by CoreAudio and sent at th bit depth and sample rate setup in the system.

So I doubt that Airplay goes higher than 48 kHz. 

Jean-Marie

Thanks Jean - That could also explain why the headroom/volume sounded limited in output power. I reverted back to Devialet AIR, as it sounds better.

see my findings here: https://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?...6#pid73586

^ If you do a long press on the input button of the Devialet's remote you will see the resolution displayed in the amp's window for a brief period. That will tell you what you're getting.

Nice - thanks for the tip

Just done this and Jean is indeed correct! Airplay was downsampling 192 to 44.1 - thanks gents

[amabrok]

Guys help me out, am I getting crazy or what?!

For the sake of staying with Roon I was ready to trade my beautifully sounding Aurender to a Roon Nucleus or Innuos Zenith. I was this close, but then last night I noticed that my Aurender appears as a Roon end point, albeit on Airplay. so I gave it a try and to my biggest surprise it sounded better than Roon on Air/Wifi! I was always under the impression that Airplay is an average wireless audio transmission protocol with bandwidth limitation and accordingly has a negative impact on signal path and hence sound quality. in Roon, signal path from the core all the way to my D400 through Aurender/Airplay appears with a green dot indicating "High Quality" and not a the purple dot that indicates an all "Lossless" path with Roon on Air/Wifi

I realize that I need to do some more rigorous testing but the initial finding took me by surprise. Has any of you tried Roon over Airplay? And what was the experience like?

Another recent advent as well makes me wanna stick with my Aurender is the release of an MQA decoding software. Now the Aurender X100 can unfold MQA files and send them as HiRes PCM with sampling rates of 88.2 or 96Khz and bit depth of 24 or 32 to my D400. With the ever growing MQA library on Tidal this can't get any better and the initial feel of the sound quality is impressive on the direct USB audio connection.

Hi - Since reading your findings i experimented with Devialet AIR v Apple Airplay. I have managed to replicate the functionality of your Aurender X100 with my 2TB SSD QNAP TS251+ NAS which has also indicated the green dot verse the purple dot.  The differences for me have been extremely subtle at best, but them again the systems fully hardwired via CAT7.... I've never used WiFi with my Expert 220 Pro CI.  

The green dot says 'high quality' which to me does not necessarily represent a bit perfect lossless audio.
The purple dot says 'lossless' which to me means this is a bit perfect audio path.

I'm not convinced Apple Airplay is better than AIR, the main difference for me was the output level. To test this i enabled both Inputs in roon as different endpoints/rooms and set the volumes as close as possible to each other then flicked between. They sounded Identical to me.... but i found Airplay had somehow limited the volume/output which obviously reduces headroom and dynamics. For me Devialet AIR is the winner, but maybe the ethernet connection is producing a fundamental difference?  

Can i ask why are you using WiFi instead of Ethernet?

Hello

I agree that "High Quality" is not bit perfect vs the "Lossless" and hence my surprise when i found Aurender/Airplay sounding better than Roon/Air. i also did the same, switching back and forth between both routes as two separate rooms to be able to check the difference .

For me it is all WiFi though

[cereal killer]

There's clearly a input issue within your setup then. I'd put my bets on WiFi being the problem.

[K4680]

New from Roon!
https://theaudiophileman.com/roon-nucleu...10d72e9a7b
https://www.henleyaudio.co.uk/cms/content/view/17

[Morten]

Guys help me out, am I getting crazy or what?!

For the sake of staying with Roon I was ready to trade my beautifully sounding Aurender to a Roon Nucleus or Innuos Zenith. I was this close, but then last night I noticed that my Aurender appears as a Roon end point, albeit on Airplay. so I gave it a try and to my biggest surprise it sounded better than Roon on Air/Wifi! I was always under the impression that Airplay is an average wireless audio transmission protocol with bandwidth limitation and accordingly has a negative impact on signal path and hence sound quality. in Roon, signal path from the core all the way to my D400 through Aurender/Airplay appears with a green dot indicating "High Quality" and not a the purple dot that indicates an all "Lossless" path with Roon on Air/Wifi

I realize that I need to do some more rigorous testing but the initial finding took me by surprise. Has any of you tried Roon over Airplay? And what was the experience like?

Another recent advent as well makes me wanna stick with my Aurender is the release of an MQA decoding software. Now the Aurender X100 can unfold MQA files and send them as HiRes PCM with sampling rates of 88.2 or 96Khz and bit depth of 24 or 32 to my D400. With the ever growing MQA library on Tidal this can't get any better and the initial feel of the sound quality is impressive on the direct USB audio connection.

When Roon was released with with air I gave it a try, I really wanted to like and go for a one box solution, but the gap to the Aurender was to big in my system.
The Aurender just sound more relaxede, I found Roon over Air to be ”eager” to finish the music, or to put in other words the Aurender lets the instruments sing longer.

Maybe it is the same you hear?

I will have to live with two boxes and the brown interface