UPnP Sound Quality

[Baldoun]

I have an Expert Pro 220 + CI almost for one year. At the beginning I used the USB port to connect it to my iMAC but after the stabile releases of the new firmware, I migrated to AIR. 2 days ago, I had a discussion with my wife that we were not getting the same SQ from the Dev when we compare to the first days of the purchases. You know the human ear, we laugh and said it is just a matter of getting used to the good quality sound but I was skeptic and without informing my wife, I started to do some A/B testing with different inputs (USB, AIR, uPNP)

And after listening the same albums for 2 days, we are sure the uPNP has a superior, wider and better sound quality and stage when you compare to the others. But the most significant shock we had was with AIR because USB sounds very very close to uPNP with only one difference, the music is a bit harsh and digital if you compare to uPNP. But if you ask about the AIR, sound stage is narrower, bass resolution is awful and the harmonics are not in the place.

I currently have the latest firmware (13.0.0 + 2.2.2) and I used same ethernet cable for uPNP and AIR (I also tried wireless for the tests) and I am sure the source or the medium is not the problem.

Can you please try on your side AIR vs uPNP because I am not talking about a small difference here, a normal person that doesn't care about music can understand the difference. It is that huge. Maybe I do something wrong with the AIR configuration or setup as I assume it is not possible that I am the first one discovered that huge difference.

Hello from overheated France,
I have exactly the same feeling. My setup is LE120 connected to an ALLO DIGIONE (Spdif) via router (Digione and router on LPS HDPlex) with Audirvana on a optimized Mac mini. For about 9 months, I played music through Roon (roonbridge on the Digione) but every time I was back to Audirvana via Air, I was really impressed by it. But because Roon is so much easier to live with, I stayed with it for that long. 2 weeks ago, with a bit of time ahead, I compared precisely the same files (Radiohead - In Rainbows 16/44.1 - Handel Messiah 24/192), on the same storage between Roon + AirRoon, Audirvana+Air and Audirvana+Upnp. My wife and I were stunned how the Audirvana UPNP configurations sounded : definitely a more accurate bass, lot of details and more density in the music (the meat around the bones). I am now staying with this configuration and I will end up my one year subscription to Roon next October.

Sebastien