Roon labs continues to have a close business relationship with meridian, as well as new relationships with such hardware manufacturers as auralic, dcs, linn, ps audio, and others still to be announced. Jan 31, 2018 also roon recommend you actually install and run roon from an ssd, if your qnap is not ssd you can add an external drive, it doesnt have to be large unit e. The original sooloos team started a new company, called roon labs, to bring to market software for managing and accessing a music library on any mac or windows pc. In the transition from physical to digital media, something has been lost. Merch rep the community and hobby you love so much. Nov 15, 2018 tidal users have another software option. For now my listening is headphonesbased and i am slowly learning how to use roon and tidal. For contextive got a roon lifelong subscription and have long believed that roon sets the standard for music player sq. Thats rightroon will soon be shipping two roon servers. Every aspect of nucleus hardware, operating system, and software was developed to provide a silent, highperformance, powerefficient roon core, by the same team that created roon. Sq wise, hmm, pretty much neck and neck, in this case usability takes precedence with roon.
Roon music player software by roon labs audiophilia. Usb3 160gb to run the database i fink, this allows quicker access to the required files and roon performs better your music would still reside on the spinning discs on the qnap. I could even envision myself buying a nice windows 810 tablet like the surface 3 pro or 4 pro and use that instead of an ipad and pc with core installation. This discussion has been removed 118959 audiogon discussion. I will move soon to a speakersbased system, although the headphones and their amps will go nowhere. The fact that roon labs has its own, dedicated roon knowledge website is.
The integral plays everything ive thrown at it with conviction, delicacy, texture. Newport show 2015 vandermeer fleshes out the background. I just signed up for roon and it doesnt sound as good as jriver on my baetis server. From a digital playback perspective this is a world class experience and all made possible by roon labs. Roon labs music serverplayer now works with sonos speakers. Sep 25, 2015 roon labs was spun off from meridian in february 2015, and roon v. I didnt test if the dropouts were with volume leveling on which could plausibly be a contributing factor, since roon does some bit depth conversion in real time source to 64bit, volume leveling, reduce to 24bit, or if there was anything else happening at the time. Sound quality of roon versus jriver jriver roon labs. The transparency to the source file of the totaldac d1 integral aside which is a big aside, because the integrals sound quality has few peers at any price point of the dacs im familiar with thanks to its 100resistor r2r ladder dac, pairing the unit with roon being fed tidal and highresolution files on a local hard drive via ethernet has done more to change the way i interact with. Right now, roon doesnt support vst plugins or any convolver. Roon and drc software whats best audio and video forum. Jul 03, 2017 btw, you might also try using the dsp engine in roon and enable sample rate conversion to the highest your meitner ma1 will do. The roon labs guys have built a software app that will challenge all existing apps.
Roon labs the next digital frontier celestialsounds. On a very basic level, roon is a software music player for os x and. Roon vs jriver i was shocked at how better roon sounded than anything else i tried on antipodes server. If youre a roon user, youll get more extensive artist bios and album writeups than you get on tidals own app, as well as a richer, more attractive interface and enhanced metadata. Sound quality of roon versus jriver roon labs community.
As soon as i start listening, i cannot seem to get enough of my own albums. The roon music server runs on either a pc or a mac. May 11, 2015 a runthrough of roon, new software service from roon labs. Roon alternativeto crowdsourced software recommendations. The brain behind the entire roon experience is the roon core.
Roon labs was founded in early 2015, but thats not when it all started. Roon music player was added by b41y in jul 2017 and the latest update was made in feb 2020. Music is an experience, and roon reconnects you with it. I didnt notice any difference in sound quality between v1. Sleeker software code can limit the need for the player to call on cpu clock cycles and again reduce associated. Roon releases mqa detection update parttime audiophile. Btw, you might also try using the dsp engine in roon and enable sample rate conversion to the highest your meitner ma1 will do. I also dont want to lose any of the sound quality advantages of the totaldac d1 server. I am intrigued by the roon control point however i dont want to use a mac or pc to manage my playlists and play music. The only downside i see besides the subscription of course so far is the fact that it obliges one to use tidal over qobuz, which means a smaller catalog, at least for classical music and jazz.
Ive now used the d1 integral as my main source in a total of three separate systems. Roon extension for source and volume control of meridian systems that are not driven by sooloos endpoints. May 21, 2017 thats rightroon will soon be shipping two roon servers. You can run it on a headless no display needed mac or a pc, or you can set it up on a. Jun 26, 2015 roon labs rob darling and enno vandermeer at t. Roon compared to jriver roon software roon labs community. Roon should be looked at as one more part of that system. Roon or jriver please help me compare steve hoffman music. Roon has the more aesthetically pleasant ui and its ability to consolidate streaming services and local media is great.
Theres no huge change, just a lot of small mods and tweaks. Aug 20, 2015 noise is also pivotal to each software players sq. Feb 14, 2019 supported platforms for roon core or roon remote. I believe hk6230 and other members here on the forum are using widows tablets and are happy with the outcome. Roon vs jriver randy only you can decide whether roon is ultimately worth its cost, but if you havent seen the roon labs video on youtube it provides a nice overview of its features and would be worth your time.
Roon was added by mariuszdaniel in mar 2014 and the latest update was made in nov 2014. I had a chance to catch up with one of the roon labs power brokers this week, namely rob darling, on what was happening with the software companys latest release, and how it addresses mqa files. It runs on windows, mac os x, and linux, including inexpensive embedded platforms like the raspberry pi. Earlier this year, meridian spun roon labs out as an independent software developer. We offer all output options analog, digital, integrated ampl. Jul 31, 2017 roon is a software component for your digital audio system designed by roon labs. The software, called roon, expands upon the sooloos experience and makes it available to anyone with a computer. And theres a version of jriver for linux computers. Having used both, this seems like a pretty fair comparison. The real beginning was in 2000, when i started helping danny dulai now coo of roon labs with some software he was developing to play mp3s in his apartment in new york. These included an all audio note uk rig, a ch precisiondynaudio one, and most recently a pass labsdevore fidelity setup. We were both sooloos dudes, and our roles are very similar.
Roon builds some of its metadata in house, but it also licenses material from third parties. I founded sooloos with danny dulai, who is our evilgeniusinresidence, so we were ceo and cto, respectively. Finally, there is the roon bridge software, which as explained by roon labs, extends roon s audio playback capabilities to other devices or computers in your home. Its possible to update the information on roon or report it as discontinued, duplicated or spam. The ability to navigate ones music collection by almost any piece of metadata and to click on, for example, a mastering engineer and display all hisher music you own is so cool. The totaldac along with roon performed flawlessly regardless of what it was hookedup to. Is roon labs and picoreplayer the answer to my prayers.
Nucleus is the easiest and fastest way to get your roon system running. The only downside i see besides the subscription of course so far is the fact that it obliges one to use tidal over qobuz, which means a smaller catalog, at. The software runs on mac, pc, ios and android devices. In cambridge on the river,cam time simultaneously speeds up and slows down. Roon beats j river by a mile, its more dynamic more detailed and is so so clean. Earlier this year, meridian audio sold off its musicsoftware applications business to roon labs, a newly established company run by the two men who developed the original sooloos media server technology that meridian later acquired. Software like jriver or roon or itunes required many man hours to make it useful to many users. Oct 04, 2019 i tested audirvana vs roon and the last version of audirvana 3. I suspect this is a good option for those with larger than 65k music libraries. Kef ls50w active music system roon roon labs core computing audio streaming digital audio music player streaming technology 0 comments when we launched the ls50w active music system at the end of 2016, our excitement over the stunning quality of the product was matched only by our excitement over the things we knew were yet to come. The metadata editing tools are accessed by clicking the metadata editing icon on the right side of.
It breached the gap between electronic engineers in search of ultimate sound and the software developers having to make these often illogical machines understandable and interactively userfriendly. Roon labs productservice brooklyn 112 photos facebook. In my own listening tests with a resonessence labs herus dac, i heard the pcm version as having more bite on the air whilst dsd comes on softer, more relaxed. Roon puts a digital frontend on your entire music collection no matter where in your system it may be stored, and allows you to source your. Roon labs music management software speeds and slows the best audio gear. Roon labs was spun off from meridian in february 2015, and roon v. Tidal is integrated into roon labs subscriptionbased musicmanagement software. This isnt a partisan diatribe but rather a comparison of relative virtues and shortcomings for anyone who might be trying to evaluate the two products. For the record, im not a jriver employee or an employee. Jriver is the better solution if you need a complete and comprehensive media center, multi room audio, complete control over the dsp parameters, room calibration etcetera. Installing roon bridge is truly simple, and we were playing music through multiple endpoints driven by chromeboxes, rapsberry pis and beaglebones within a few minutes of starting the downloads. We buy amps, dacs, and speakers to put together our rig. Most instructions are a bit clearer and simpler from roon labs than from jriver, and most tasks are similarly easier with roon. Since discovering roon labs, my life has completely changed in a good way that is.
Hifiberry is the leading manufacturer of high quality audio equipment for the raspberry pi platform. Roon or jriver please help me compare steve hoffman. Roon users across the globe should welcome the new architecture updates to transition to full mqa integration being employed in this build 242. I know that mdat will automatically do 2xdsd, but ive got personal experience that if you can offload the work of upsampling from your dac, your sound quality will improve at least it does with my dcs debussy.
May 03, 2015 the roon labs guys have built a software app that will challenge all existing apps. Thats part of the reason the software is being sold as a subscription service versus a onetime purchase. If you would like to get into computer audio music playback but have found the software unappealing or challenging, give roon a try. We have more convenience than ever, but no feeling of excitement or engagement. Linn should have named them differently to avoid this sort of confusion.
Roon also offers its bridge download, which is a small software. Finally, there is the roon bridge software, which as explained by roon labs, extends roons audio playback capabilities to other devices or computers in your home. But if roon is beyond your financial comfort zone, jriver is still a formidably capable program thats cheaper and has additional features. Roon is sort of a spinoff of meridian and their sooloos software. I tested audirvana vs roon and the last version of audirvana 3. Roon hasnt been around long enough to have generated the extensive archive of information and help found in jrivers interact forum, but a lot of the content of jrivers wiki and interact is both dense enough to. Roon music player alternatives and similar software. Roon will find all of that information about your music and present it in a browserlike playback window. Virtual systems let the world see what youve built.
Its possible to update the information on roon music player or report it as discontinued, duplicated or spam. Roon bridge is the software that enables devices running windows, mac, or linux variants to act as roon endpoints. A runthrough of roon, new software service from roon labs. However, it does make exploring the music you own interesting fred smith played on joe bloggs album, who else did he play with, that sort of thing. Roonlabs audio player software part 1 by the hans beekhuyzen channel. Roon is a software component for your digital audio system designed by roon labs. In case anyone is interested in this, roon now works feeding sonos speakers as of ver 1. Newcomers who have spent a few manseconds before complaining should show a little respect for the efforts of those who brought real knowledge and real effort into developing something useful. Makes me want to order up a 1year roon subscription and continue doing some sidebyside comparisons. Editing metadata a distraction in playing back computer audio files occurs when there is no metadata cover art, artist name, track names, or other information about the performance shown for an album in your library.