02-Feb-2019, 16:28
Interesting my post in the Roon forum generated so much excitement here ! But, at the risk of disappointment, I must say it was a naming issue. I should really have called the zone Devialet AIR in the first place!
I have been playing with Roon + Quobuz for a week or so, but I must say I am quite disappointed with the results. I don't quite like the UI, in particular the horizontal-scrolling (instead of vertical) that scrolls screen by screen (instead of infinite scrolling) and the popups that don't quite act like popup windows and cannot be closed with ESC. I find Focus search difficult to use (for example, I cannot say 'everything NOT classical' or 'NOT in Qobuz" i.e. local). My 20k track iTunes library was poorly imported; switching to import using File tags instead of Roon helped only marginally. Using French tags in iTunes did not help. I find searching in Qobuz is not quite effective to say the least. Overall, I prefer Qobuz's UI which I think is more effective. And Roon's front argument that you can browse by composer and find a nicely display bio with a list of major compositions may work well with non-classical music, but I don't think it does with classical music because: 1/ you know the composers; 2/ there are just so many recordings of the same piece that they are just a mess to search, in Qobuz... or in Roon...
But I must say Roon's implementation of Devialet AIR is excellent once setup and never had any glitches or network cuts, contrarily to the original implementation of AIR by Devialet. And it's quite comforting to know that you are in bit-perfect mode (would be a nice, although probably futile, extension to Qobuz player).
Most important, the sound produced by Roon seems somewhat mellower and more detailed, compared to Qobuz Player or Audirvana+Qobuz, both streaming through Devialet AIR. The latter two producing the same, somewhat harsh sound on this particular recording:
Kissin/DG, Beethoven, Appasionata sonata, 24/92
But is this the true sound of the recording, and due to Roon's better audio processing or implementation of Devialet AIR, or an artifact added by Roon's internal sound processing, which would then not be bit-perfect, despite no DSP processing being selected?
I have been playing with Roon + Quobuz for a week or so, but I must say I am quite disappointed with the results. I don't quite like the UI, in particular the horizontal-scrolling (instead of vertical) that scrolls screen by screen (instead of infinite scrolling) and the popups that don't quite act like popup windows and cannot be closed with ESC. I find Focus search difficult to use (for example, I cannot say 'everything NOT classical' or 'NOT in Qobuz" i.e. local). My 20k track iTunes library was poorly imported; switching to import using File tags instead of Roon helped only marginally. Using French tags in iTunes did not help. I find searching in Qobuz is not quite effective to say the least. Overall, I prefer Qobuz's UI which I think is more effective. And Roon's front argument that you can browse by composer and find a nicely display bio with a list of major compositions may work well with non-classical music, but I don't think it does with classical music because: 1/ you know the composers; 2/ there are just so many recordings of the same piece that they are just a mess to search, in Qobuz... or in Roon...
But I must say Roon's implementation of Devialet AIR is excellent once setup and never had any glitches or network cuts, contrarily to the original implementation of AIR by Devialet. And it's quite comforting to know that you are in bit-perfect mode (would be a nice, although probably futile, extension to Qobuz player).
Most important, the sound produced by Roon seems somewhat mellower and more detailed, compared to Qobuz Player or Audirvana+Qobuz, both streaming through Devialet AIR. The latter two producing the same, somewhat harsh sound on this particular recording:
Kissin/DG, Beethoven, Appasionata sonata, 24/92
But is this the true sound of the recording, and due to Roon's better audio processing or implementation of Devialet AIR, or an artifact added by Roon's internal sound processing, which would then not be bit-perfect, despite no DSP processing being selected?
