New Phantom?

[vaguedetails]

I found S/PDIF to be rather shrill on top and undefined in the bass region – not a nice listening experience. Tried a few endpoints (from Pi/Digi+ to Metrum Baby Ambre) to the same results. Airplay is of course limited and sounds a bit wooly. I tried SmallGreenComputers’ UPNP Bridge (a pimped up Pi that offers itself as a Squeezebox to Roon, while relaying the signal to a UPNP renderer of choice), but it does not play nice with the Dialog (tracks play until 2/3, then skip).

Welcome to Devialetchat, RBM! I saw your new setup on the Roon forum. Very nice! When you were using a RPi through S/PDIF did you connect it to one of the Phantoms or through Dialog? I’m asking because the Dialog has a problem with S/PDIF and adds distortion but the optical input of the Phantoms works well, at least to my ears. Therefore, I use Roon mainly with RAAT to an RPi3 into the S/PDIF of one of my Phantoms. I also use some Room correction filters purchased at HAF and I’m very happy with the SQ. Not so much with the current Qobuz integration into Roon v1.6 that underperforms speedwise (when skiping tracks or selecting new albums) compared to the Spark implementation, which is snappy and rock solid including Hires streaming.

Agreed. I had tons of issues connecting directly to the Dialog. Plugging directly into one of the Phantom (although seemingly not as logical to me as plugging into the thing that was supposed to be providing stereo support) fixed all the stuttering and audio issues. I can’t get past the awful UI of Spark, particularly in comparison to Roon.