How good is Roon AIR?

[Morten]

I am intrigued by the possibility to remove one box, but in the almost two years I have used a Aurender have it not failed once, I do not want to go back to rebooting from time to time, so how stable is it?

Kind regards Morten

[pjlarge]

ROCK running on an Intel NUC is extremely stable. The only attention it's had since setting it up a month ago was last night to install the correct codec for some of the radio stations. It just works.
In fact, I'd say the whole Roon experience is better than the Naim NDX I was using as a front end into the D1000. The radio connects faster, seems more stable and the whole thing sounds at least as good if not better than the NDX. So now I'm down to the D1000, the turntable and the NUC :-)

[Axel]

I've only been using Roon for a couple of weeks, playing mainly high res. music files from a NAS drive via a Mac and using a iPad for remote control. I've never had a drop out or any strange noises. The whole experience has led me to paying for a lifetime subscription.

[Hifi_swlon]

I am intrigued by the possibility to remove one box, but in the almost two years I have used a Aurender have it not failed once, I do not want to go back to rebooting from time to time, so how stable is it?

Kind regards Morten

Roons pretty stable. I have mine playing almost 24/7 and I do need to refresh/restart the core or core server now and again. Every month or so. But I run it on a dedicated but non-optimised (apart from really obvious things) Mac.

If the Aurenders completely stable, I'd say it's probably a better bet if you never want to reboot. If you can live with the brown interface

[Morten]

Thanks Gents, I will when I have time try to install Roon to get a feel for the interface, I only use the Aurender with Tidal will if the user experience is as good with Roon I might consider it. Will then bye a "Rock"

I agree that the brown interface is not pretty, but it works?

Regards Morten

[f1eng]

Yeah, but bar the look and feel, do you (and f1eng) find the sound better via Audirvana and AIR? I guess that's more the point of this thread?

Both posts are somewhat ambiguous as to whether they were the same or one was better than the other....

What do you find ambiguous about "I would say the best sound I get streaming is Audirvana+ with AIR." ?

[ICUDoc]

A good topic,OP.
I love the way my system sounds now- the best I've ever had.
Ethernet cable /AIR sounds better than USB.
Roon sounds better than iTunes.
So now I have sweet highs, transparent midrange and ROCK-solid bass, with amazing dynamic range and very loud max output. And terrific sound staging.
All in all, Im very happy- it doesn't have the limpid "beautiful" sound you get from great valve amps, but it sounds pretty realistic and way louder. Perhaps just as real. Very happy camper.
Next things to try: component isolation (basalt blocks?); better Ethernet cable (still deciding what to try)
Thanks for a great forum - thanks to Roon for revitalising Devialet...

[Hifi_swlon]

Yeah, but bar the look and feel, do you (and f1eng) find the sound better via Audirvana and AIR? I guess that's more the point of this thread?

Both posts are somewhat ambiguous as to whether they were the same or one was better than the other....

What do you find ambiguous about "I would say the best sound I get streaming is Audirvana+ with AIR." ?

Well, you went on to say you'd 'tried Roon but didn't find it better', not that it was worse, so it could have sounded the same.

I was curious just because you appear to rule Roon out because you don't like the UI/feel etc, and have said the same in the past - which is all completely your prerogative of course - but it also kind of left the impression that maybe you not finding it better was partly to do with the fact that you just didn't like it. I.e. They both sound the same but since you prefer Audirvanas interface that's the default winner? Hence I was curious to know whether that was the case or you actually felt Roon sounded worse.

[Unclemonty]

I have an Aurender N100H and am also using Roon Air. I would say that the Aurender is noticeably better, though Roon Air does sound very good, and cetainly loads better than a Sonos unit I also have connected.

I put the superiority down to the fact that the Aurender is playing most off the internal disk, has caching, and is connected to the Devialet with a short USB cable. Roon Air, on the other hand, is connected via about 20m of standard cat5 in wall cable to a NAS.

Despite the sound quality improvement with the Aurender, I have to say I think Roon Air is more than good enough, and if I did not already have the Aurender already then I would feel no need to buy a dedicated streamer given that Roon Air is 'alsmost' free.

[Nightmare]

I put the superiority down to the fact that the Aurender is playing most off the internal disk, has caching, and is connected to the Devialet with a short USB cable. Roon Air, on the other hand, is connected via about 20m of standard cat5 in wall cable to a NAS.

I think it is more than difficult to ascribe the "noticeably better" sound quality to the Aurender under these conditions. A directly and short ethernet connection should be minimum for a reliable and more meaningful test.

Despite the sound quality improvement with the Aurender, I have to say I think Roon Air is more than good enough, and if I did not already have the Aurender already then I would feel no need to buy a dedicated streamer given that Roon Air is 'alsmost' free.

Good point. A lot of bugs for maybe a small sound profit.
As it is most times, admittedly