Roon Help needed: How Audirvana and Roon enhance sound quality?

[SKApretto71]

I love to be curious and invested some time to research on Roon and Audirvana, goal being to understand why they do exists.

I see the value of mixing together local files and streaming, and to allow multi-room management on a single platform no matter the brands. Usability, metadata management and flexibility are not under question.

But

Both of them highlight the best possible quality in audio, and I'm lost here when concerning to streaming only.

Using streamers (CA and others) and Qobuz Connect, my understanding is that music streams goes to the device directly, Audirvana and Roon would sit in the middle and play some magic. But how this would enhance the audio quality remains a mystery for me. I can do EQ (CA) and Room Correction (WiiM) already...

Anyone can help?

 

[Burnside]

Some users (non-Roon users clearly ) believe that Roon can reduce sound quality so don’t use it.

 

[EddNog]

Audirvana serves multiple purposes depending on the user. For me, I use it for streaming my personal library (which is on an SSD attached to my laptop) to my streamer via UPnP, and I also use it to pull Qobuz and transmit it on to my streamer whenever I wish to apply ReplayGain to the music from Qobuz because my Marantz M1 doesn't know how to apply ReplayGain to Qobuz streams like the WiiMs do.

-Ed

 

[SKApretto71]

Audirvana serves multiple purposes depending on the user. For me, I use it for streaming my personal library (which is on an SSD attached to my laptop) to my streamer via UPnP, and I also use it to pull Qobuz and transmit it on to my streamer whenever I wish to apply ReplayGain to the music from Qobuz because my Marantz M1 doesn't know how to apply ReplayGain to Qobuz streams like the WiiMs do.

-Ed

I'm coming to same thinking. Both can be very valuable (catalogue management, multi-room management, audio processing) once you find a missing feature in your setup. As far s you are happy and can control the streamer(s) easily, will be hard to find a compelling value as add on that solves a problem you just do not have.

 

[Patagonia]

Both Audirvana and Roon claim they will configure signal pass as to minimize degradation and prevent any alteration, this can be seen more clearly using a computer for streaming where they will by-pass the OS audio proccessing (Core Audio in MacOS for example) and give it exclusivity preventing other computer proccesses at the same time.

Is this better/worst than comercial streamer, or even produce audible differences? I guess it will depend on each case and how each steamer implements software/hardware. Also, with a little more efort/skill you could be able to configure a computer to do the same and even for free, take some Linux distributions such as Daphile for example (Been using it for at least 5 years)…but yes, they are not as sleek as a comercial solution.

But one thing in which Roon rules for me is on the library managing and information, it is very good on showing you the different versions of recordings, managing artists and composers on Classical music, etc, etc…haven’t seen any other near Roon on this subject…I will update when my Wiim Amp Ultra arrives next week, haven’t used Wiim Home yet.

 

[simbun]

Both Audirvana and Roon claim they will configure signal pass as to minimize degradation and prevent any alteration, this can be seen more clearly using a computer for streaming where they will by-pass the OS audio proccessing (Core Audio in MacOS for example)

To clarify, that's only relevant when using your computer for playback (analogue output to WiiM) not streaming.