16-Jul-2020, 02:51
@Greg ,
There's a poll on which sounds best at https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Which-so...grated-AIR
It's a bit old now but, ignoring the 15 people who said they didn't bother to A/B test, there were 100 responses which is really neat if you want percentages because the number of people in each group will be identical to the percentage :-)
Basically 22 people preferred AIR, 41 people preferred RAAT, and 21 said they sounded the same, and 16 said "Not sure, they sound similar, maybe depends on what music I am listening to".
That means if you want a "first past the post" result RAAT was the winner but if you believe in preferential voting like we have in Australia it could be either AIR or RAAT because it isn't clear which option the other 37 ended up choosing because you have to select one when playing music from Roon.
There was no option to specify whether you were using ethernet or wifi or what the speed of your ethernet connection was if you were using ethernet. The last responses were in July last year so it's getting old and I have no idea how the numbers stand now.
If you want to start a new thread I'd start a new poll and give different options. I'd ask what method people were using, not what they thought gave the best sound quality, and I'd specify options like RAAT/Ethernet, RAAT/WiFi, AIR/Ethernet and AIR/WiFi so you get a clearer idea of what's going on and maybe even specify different options for RAAT/Gigabit Ethernet and RAAT/100T Ethernet to get an idea of what ethernet users are doing about RAAT. I'd also provide options to find out how many people are using AIR because they prefer the sound, how many prefer RAAT for sound quality but are using AIR because of problems with gigabit ethernet. That kind of poll would give us all a lot more info on how people feel about RAAT vs AIR.
I don't know how many responses a new poll would get. I think the fact that this poll was started on 17 February last year, a few days after the update which gave us RAAT when the question was highly topical, may have contributed to the number of responses and now, when the question is no longer as topical, a new poll may not get as many responses..
@mdconnelly has a good point about RAAT having the advantage of allowing you to play to multiple endpoints and some may prefer RAAT over AIR for that reason. Some people may even swap between using RAAT and AIR because they prefer the sound of AIR and use it when streaming to a single endpoint and use RAAT when they want to stream to multiple endpoints.
Designing the options for a really useful poll that provides a lot of information on how people are streaming from Roon isn't easy. One other thing you would really need to do is to try and prevent people whose Devialet's don't have the CI board and who can only use AIR from voting unless you want to provide another specific option for them because they're using AIR because it's their only streaming option, not because they think it sounds better than RAAT or because they're having problems with RAAT.
There's a poll on which sounds best at https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Which-so...grated-AIR
It's a bit old now but, ignoring the 15 people who said they didn't bother to A/B test, there were 100 responses which is really neat if you want percentages because the number of people in each group will be identical to the percentage :-)
Basically 22 people preferred AIR, 41 people preferred RAAT, and 21 said they sounded the same, and 16 said "Not sure, they sound similar, maybe depends on what music I am listening to".
That means if you want a "first past the post" result RAAT was the winner but if you believe in preferential voting like we have in Australia it could be either AIR or RAAT because it isn't clear which option the other 37 ended up choosing because you have to select one when playing music from Roon.
There was no option to specify whether you were using ethernet or wifi or what the speed of your ethernet connection was if you were using ethernet. The last responses were in July last year so it's getting old and I have no idea how the numbers stand now.
If you want to start a new thread I'd start a new poll and give different options. I'd ask what method people were using, not what they thought gave the best sound quality, and I'd specify options like RAAT/Ethernet, RAAT/WiFi, AIR/Ethernet and AIR/WiFi so you get a clearer idea of what's going on and maybe even specify different options for RAAT/Gigabit Ethernet and RAAT/100T Ethernet to get an idea of what ethernet users are doing about RAAT. I'd also provide options to find out how many people are using AIR because they prefer the sound, how many prefer RAAT for sound quality but are using AIR because of problems with gigabit ethernet. That kind of poll would give us all a lot more info on how people feel about RAAT vs AIR.
I don't know how many responses a new poll would get. I think the fact that this poll was started on 17 February last year, a few days after the update which gave us RAAT when the question was highly topical, may have contributed to the number of responses and now, when the question is no longer as topical, a new poll may not get as many responses..
@mdconnelly has a good point about RAAT having the advantage of allowing you to play to multiple endpoints and some may prefer RAAT over AIR for that reason. Some people may even swap between using RAAT and AIR because they prefer the sound of AIR and use it when streaming to a single endpoint and use RAAT when they want to stream to multiple endpoints.
Designing the options for a really useful poll that provides a lot of information on how people are streaming from Roon isn't easy. One other thing you would really need to do is to try and prevent people whose Devialet's don't have the CI board and who can only use AIR from voting unless you want to provide another specific option for them because they're using AIR because it's their only streaming option, not because they think it sounds better than RAAT or because they're having problems with RAAT.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
