At this time (Jan 2016) no formal decision has been made by Aurender to implement it or not. The Aurender itself sounds simply fantastic when playing its internal files, so I can only dream of it hosting Roon. But even as it is, it’s already very nice to be able to create a second zone this way. Roon naturally can’t fix the limitations of Airplay, but they have developed their RoonReady protocol which should yield much better results i f only Aurender would choose to implement it. It’s probably also because, with the Aurender, Airplay runs over ethernet instead of a more direct connection, but I keep getting stuttering and dropouts, and when the sounds plays stably, it doesn’t sound very good, with what seems to be bandwidth limiting resulting in a sound that reminds of very low bitrate mp3. Roon to Aurender N10Īt this time (Jan 2016), the Aurender N10 only permits the use of Airplay (not to confuse with Devialet’s Air), and so far I am not very enthusiastic about this protocol. The sound playing local files on the Music Server via USB has more body and substance, as well as more impressive dynamics and more natural timbre. The Reference Flow is the best-sounding solution so far for Devialet in my secondary system. AudioAanZee Reference Flow Music Server to Devialet However, there are tighter sounding programs around, such as Foobar for Windows (albeit too tight for my taste actually) and PureMusic, Audirvana, and Amarra for Mac. Midrange and treble, as well as ambiance and soundstaging, are comparable. It’s subtle but definitely an audible feeling of more speed and attack, especially in the lower registers. jRiver Media Center 18 to DevialetĬompared to Roon, jRiver MC18 on the same PC using Wasapi and the same Devialet Air protocol sounds a little tighter and cleaner. Roon via Airplay does have something of a jRiver sound to it, meaning that in the absolute sense it is slightly relaxed and forgiving in nature due to transients being slightly rounded, but of very high quality nonetheless. Some people have experienced dropouts and white noise but with Ethernet, my connection is super stable and with wireless, I have only experienced dropouts, never any white noise.ĭevialet claims to offer bit-accurate playback over their protocol and Roon in turn always selects the best playback solution available, so this should be a very high-quality playback method and indeed it is. The reliability of the connection is dependent on the Air connection itself, which is better with wired than wireless. Once the Devialet software is installed, you can select a Devialet (in my case a Devialet 120) as an endpoint in Roon the same way as is done for local playback. Roon works well into Devialet products using Devialet’s own Air protocol. So, even when streaming from a PC to a Devialet, the sound will be better with the music playing locally on the PC than with it playing from a library on a NAS. Locally stored music sounds different from music played from a NAS, the latter attaining more of the “streaming” quality of a thinner sound. If you want Roon convenience as well as state-of-the-art sound, I think the best bet is to wait for Roon to become available on dedicated Music Servers.ĭo note that the location of the audio files also matters for the sound. If you want the comfort and affordability of streaming from any normal PC or Mac, then this can indeed sound mighty fine, but it won’t be state of the art. In the streaming category, Roon is definitely among the best I have encountered. I have accepted this as a fact of life, but it seems that Meridian, Roon, and Devialet have found a way to squeeze the maximum out of their protocols. With USB or S/PDIF, when using a PC or Mac with an audiophile software player the sound will also usually be more accurate and vivid than when streaming. To my ears, any streaming method always sounds a bit thinner, less rich and colorful, less enveloping than a direct connection such as USB or SP/DIF from a dedicated Music Server. This section will be open-ended, describing my experiences with 3rd party devices as they become available. This means that you can stream from Roon to any Squeezebox-labelled device as well as to devices that can run software emulations such as the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black. Please see the Roon website and forum for more details on functionality.Īlthough it is mentioned on the Roon website that software implementations like Squeezelite are not supported, so far for me they do actually work just fine. The app looks a lot like the main application and works exactly the same, with the same functionality. There is a wide range of Roon-ready manufacturers already and I can only assume that the list will keep growing. Roon is becoming compatible with more and more endpoints, both software and hardware-based. As I wrote in part 3, lots has happened on the Roon front since this review was published.
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