New Music Service With a Difference?

I think we all know by now what this section is for.
Post Reply
User avatar
Ray P
No idea why I do this anymore
Posts: 6294
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:18 pm
Location: Somerset

#1 New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Ray P »

I've been checking out this new music service, which looks very interesting, if not the cheapest thing on the planet;

https://roonlabs.com/

There's a review here;

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conte ... n-through/

Ray
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Michael L
Old Hand
Posts: 653
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:10 pm
Location: Shrewsbury

#2 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Michael L »

I am listening to Tidal on a month's trial using ickstream and SBT. I like it a lot but £20 month seems a lot of £££ when I could be buying lps to keep
for ever.
User avatar
Ray P
No idea why I do this anymore
Posts: 6294
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:18 pm
Location: Somerset

#3 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Ray P »

I finally got round to installing Roon and signing up to the 14day trial.

First impressions are very positive, streets ahead of any other music server I've tried both in presentation/navigation and in the intelligent metadata/information that it brings to the party. Works seamlessly with your own music library and Tidal.

Well worth a look, see the links in my first post.

Downside is that it is a chargeable service, it works out at about £6-7pm, which I could live with.

One of the main attractions for me is that it looks as though it will soon offer integration with HQPlayer and I'll almost certainly subscribe when that arrives.

Ray
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
User avatar
Greg
Social outcast
Posts: 3198
Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 11:14 am
Location: Bristol, UK

#4 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Greg »

Yes Ray, completely agree with your observations. Nick has been using Roon for a while now and swears by it. I hope to have it going in a month or so.
User avatar
Ray P
No idea why I do this anymore
Posts: 6294
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:18 pm
Location: Somerset

#5 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Ray P »

Very impressed Greg, it's still gathering information about my library, several thousand sets of lyrics and biographies already. The Roon metadata seems very well sorted too.

As a music library system it makes JRiver, Squeezeserver, Foobar etc. look primitive.

Ray
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Michael L
Old Hand
Posts: 653
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:10 pm
Location: Shrewsbury

#6 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Michael L »

How are people streaming Roon to their hifi? I have been using Tidal via LMS - SBT but I don't think any plug-ins have been developed yet for Roon.
Just had a look on the Roon forum. Looks like Squeezebox support is on the cards at some point.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/squeez ... rt/1043/92
User avatar
Ray P
No idea why I do this anymore
Posts: 6294
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:18 pm
Location: Somerset

#7 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Ray P »

Avinunca1 wrote:How are people streaming Roon to their hifi? I have been using Tidal via LMS - SBT but I don't think any plug-ins have been developed yet for Roon.
Just had a look on the Roon forum. Looks like Squeezebox support is on the cards at some point.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/squeez ... rt/1043/92
At present, remembering it was only released earlier this year, I believe Roon supports USB devices but they have always planned streaming capability. Their own streaming capability will be known as RoonSpeakers.

I think Roon might already have Airplay support but if that's of interest best check it out as I have made no conscious effort to find out about it.

It looks as though support of Squeezebox endpoints is close and might make it into the next release of Roon, scheduled for November,

I believe Roon is also looking at UPnP/DLNA, recognising that there are millions of endpoints with this capability.

Personally I'm hanging out for the HQPlayer integration, which seems to be not too far off. I'll use Roon to Control HQPlayer on the same computer, with HQPlayer working it's upsampling magic before streaming the results to HQPlayer NAA (Network Audio Adaptor) endpoints. My intention is to convert all my CD rips to DSD256 on the fly and convert to analogue with a LP filter 'no DAC' solution.

Have any of you chaps had a look at Roon? If so what do you think?

Ray
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
User avatar
Nick
Site Admin
Posts: 15708
Joined: Sun May 06, 2007 10:20 am
Location: West Yorkshire

#8 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Nick »

Hopefully you wont throw the original away given that DSD is lossy,

Edit: that would be the "on the fly" bit, sorry.
Whenever an honest man discovers that he's mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or he will cease to be honest.
User avatar
Ray P
No idea why I do this anymore
Posts: 6294
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:18 pm
Location: Somerset

#9 Re: New Music Service With a Difference?

Post by Ray P »

Nick wrote:Hopefully you wont throw the original away given that DSD is lossy,
Yes Nick, original rips kept safe and sound as you spotted.

In the beginning the big theme seemed to be 'bit perfect', and to a large extent that still holds true in terms of preserving data integrity but I'm now less bothered with it in absolute terms, recognising that tweaking to suit personal tastes is perfectly acceptable. I'm finding that upsampling to DSD and experimenting with the excellent selection of filters available in HQPlayer gives, to my ears, better sonic results than conventional PCM playback.

Ray
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
Post Reply