RS130 Roon Ready certification has been completed

ROSE NOTICE Notice
#21

I know perfectly well that Roon-YES/Roon-NO is a very intense debate among high fidelity enthusiasts, but having the possibility to make comparisons between streaming with and without Roon, I think it is useful to delve deeper and try different system settings .
Then, ultimately, trying to improve the listening by changing the parameters is always positive, especially if the experience is shared with other people, even if they have different opinions.

First of all, the result I have obtained with today’s tests is a “one day of work” and is the best ever.
I had never achieved the current listening quality using Roon, so ultimately I think I have achieved my goal.

  1. The aim
    0.1 To set up the hardware (the PC) to the minimum overload,
    0.2 Its operating system (Windows or Mac OS, Linux etc) runningg as smooth as possible
    0.3 Set the Roon Server to devolve the entire digital processing task to the RS130 and

    0.4 
 use Roon only for music management, with minimal processing, tending to zero

The following settings are the result of research done with DeepSeek AI and consultation of various forums, including this one.
Some of the settings are specific to my system, but generally those not related to PC hardware are all settings applicable to any system.

  1. PC, Hardware (specific, my system)
    1.1. NiPoGi Mini PC (one tens of Roon Titan’s cost)
    1.2. CPU AMD Ryzen 7 - 3750H - clock 3.8 GHz
    1.3. Graphics board AMD Radeon RX Vega 10.DP 4k UHD 60Hz
    1.4. Memory 32 GB Ram
    1.5. Storage internal 512 GB SSD (suggested an external SSD
or NAS )
    1.6. Display used: Panasonic TV 64" HDR 3840 x 2160 px @ 60Hz

  2. PC System settings (specific, my system)
    2.1. OS Windows 11 - 64 bit for CPU x64
    2.2. The system “must” be dedicated only for ROON Server - NO other apps installed !
    2.3. All Windows (or Mac OS) apps disabled, no apps in background (except the OS apps)
    2.4. All notifications OFF
    2.5. All audio settings disabled, audio high resolution output (on PC) disabled
    2.6. All energy saving setting to get the maximum performance and not the maximum energy saving
    2.7. Only one app at menu start: the Roon Server
    2.8. No password at start up (at power on the OS starts and launches the Roon Server)
    2.9. PC WiFi disabled, Ethernet LAN enabled
    2.10. Video chip set to HDR max resolution @ 60Hz
    2.11. Edge OFF, One Drive OFF, Windows auto-update OFF and so on (No app in background)

  3. Local Network Setting (specific, my system)
    3.1 Fiber Optic net @ 10 Gbps, main net branches
    3.2 CAT-8 Copper cables net @ 10 Gbps, secondary branches
    3.3 Very short CAT-8 link between PC LAN port and Audio System switch (LHY SW-6 SFP)
    3.4 First LAN port of the Audio System switch “must” be optically isolated, possibly with SFP module
    3.5 Very short Fiber optic link from Audio System switch and RS130 streamer, via SFP
    3.6 Optional NAS for music storage. I have a Synology 923+, but my library is inside the RS130’s SSD
    3.7. WiFi 7 Mesh enabled for Roon Management in iPhone or iPad (PC communicate via LAN port)

  4. Roon Server Settings
    4.1 Latest OS Roon Server version (in Italy) v2.0 Build 1496
    4.2 No Auto Backup
    4.3 Background Audio Analysis Speed OFF
    4.4 On-Demand Audio Analysis Speed OFF
    4.5 Rose RS130 End Point setting, MQA Decode & Render
    4.6 Rose RS130 End Point setting, Fixed Volume
    4.7 Rose RS130 Re-Synch delay set @ 0 ms
    4.8 Treat MQA as better than CD quality but not as good as lossless Hi-Res content
    4.9 Prefer Edited (Clean) Versions YES
    4.10 Service: Qobuz Hi-Res 24 bit / up to 192 kHz (depends on Qobuz account)
    4.11 Roon Arc OFF (important, Port Forwarding = 0)

  5. Mobile iOS/Android Roon App
    5.1 Installed in iPhone for “quick and temporary” use
    5.2 Installed in iPad mini Gen 6 for “dedicated” ROON use (plus remote mouse and keyboard ctrl)

  6. Reference songs used for comparison Roon-YES / Roon-NO: when my ears perceive these 10 music exactly as expected, then for me the system is well set up
    6.1. Franz Liszt, Les Preludes - Symphonische Dichtung Nr. 3, Deutsche Grammophon, Herbert von Karajan
    6.2. Pink Floyd, The Early Years, Live at Pompei, A Saucerful of Secrets (2016 remix) from min 07:40
    6.3. Genesis, Foxtrot, Supper’s Ready (2007 remix)
    6.4. Tanya Donelly, Moonbeam Monkey (duet)
    6.5. Mike Oldfield, Five Miles Out (2013 remix), Orabidoo
    6.6. Edvard Grieg, Peer Gynt, Morning Mood - Prelude to Act IV, Paavo Jarv
    6.7. Pazza Idea, Patty Pravo, performed by Dorsey Dodd, 6 phases Super Stereo
    6.8. Andreé Brasseur, The Golden Organ, A taste of Tobacco
    6.9. Zucchero Fornaciari, B.B. King Duet, Dune Mosse, Hey Man - Sing a Song (album Version)
    6.10. Yes, Live in Montreux, And You And I,

Result: Objective Achieved !
Minimal differences, imperceptible and secondary.
NO evident differences in using the RS130 Rose Connect alone or the Roon Server
For me this is the best result ever achieved before.
From now on I will use Roon for library management !

A technical note.
The protocol. of audio communication from Roon to the RS130 is the RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Transport).
We, as users, cannot intervene or interact with the protocol as it is standardised for the exchange of data with the Roon Ready devices, but it would be nice if one day they will offer us the possibility of synchronising the Roon clock and the End Point clock with a clean 10 MHz external signal.

Giuseppe Biondo

3 Likes
#22

Ah, yes, synchronizing a by definition asynchronous protocol. That makes lots of audiophile sense!

Of course anyone who does not have a recording studio but invests in an external clock is feeble-minded anyway


#23

Yes, that’s the weak aspect of RAAT

#24

Wrong:
RAAT was designed to interface a multitude of devices, not necessarily expensive, therefore the asynchronism was chosen to reduce the costs of the End Points.
But we have a super End Point, the RS130 is far from cheap and for this reason it “deserves” a synchronous clock, decidedly more precise and faster which also reduces latencies and further processes which are essential in asynchronous.

At the moment, with Roon, we must obey the imposed RAAT protocol

#25

:man_facepalming:
RAAT is asynchronous because the underlying network protocols are asynchronous. You can stick a dozen fake “audiophile” switches with clock inputs in the chain, it will not become synchronous. The only thing that matters is that the clock in the DAC is accurate enough (which it is even in a $100 DAC).

There is nothing that needs to be synchronmized between a Roon server and a DAC anyway.

It’s a finme streamer, as far as those things go, but there’s nothing “super” about it.

It’s quite inexpensive, as far as audio jewelry goes. Not that more expensive ones worked any better. Or cheaper ones any worse.

If you want to use an inferior synchronous mechanisms, connect your DAC with S/PDIF or I2S, and you can happily deal with jitter, and maybe, possibly, needing to use an external clock to synch things. Of course any decent DAC, including the 160, will reclock incoming signal anyway, so the only effect it will have is you fiddling with connections to achieve absolutely nothing.

On the network side of the 130, no amount of clocks will change anything at all.

Yes, because it works and works well. And even if you managed to make it talk any other protocol, like some Diretta bullsh*t or whatever HQPlasyer uses, or anything else, it would be just as asynchronous as RAAT. If you want to have a synchronous network connection, whatever that might mean, you need to come up with your own new networking standard. Of course then neither your Roon (or any other) server nor your 130 will support it, so good luck with that.

#26

One can say TCP\IP is the same. Yet it works. I think most observations where RAAT seems not as good as native come from devices that have local storage and people use that storage. Between that and netork issues, too many bad settings in Roon etc
 many many reasons. But I know many from other forums who have setups way better than mine who use roon and have never say its not as good as their native. Grimm MU2 shows what roon and good endpoint can do.

#27

Thanks a lot Giuseppe for the effort and tips! I updated Roon settings as suggested, making the sound cleaner and more transparent indeed.
However, I have trouble disabling Arc from Roon settings on my phone. How did you go about that, please?

I find synchronising the clock from the RS130 with the lhy OCS-2s very rewarding, so understand your suggestion.
Thanks again!

#28

It is explained at the point 4.11 (probably not clearly
)
ARC is disabled preventing the access port from having the possibility of merging the data, therefore the best way is to not give it an address, i.e. set the “Forwarding Port” to 0 (reset) and ARC is automatically excluded from the system.
The default “Port forwarding” should be 50000 or 55000, set it to 0 (zero) and 
 voilà, ARC disabled

1 Like
#29

And even that makes no difference in general case.

There is no “possibility” of anything here (there may be some extremely unlikely and remote reasons for disabling ARC from a security standpoint and using a VPN instead, but they are irrelevant here), this is pure magical thinking.

The rest of Roon-related recommendations are similarly complete BS.

Completely unnecessary, unless you are trying to run it on a Commodore 64 you had found somewhere.

Completely unnecessary

As irrelevant as what wallpaper you are using.

Has no effect on anything with Roon, and HDR on will just make the screen painful to look at.

All useless, except auto-update, and that one should configure to check for them, but not reboot whenever Windows feels like it.

So first all audio travels from RS-130 to the Roon server (for those worried about nonexistent problems, increasing electrical noise in the streamer), then goes right back to it.

The correct way is to run Roon server on the DS-923+, and store the music on it as well.

Good luck redoing your library if something crashes. Of course, one might enjoy doing that, but normal people configure scheduled backups at night, when they are not using the system. Not that a backup had any effect on audio quality, of course.

So, you’ve just disabled everything that makes Roon the best music library management software.

Oh, and you do not want to listen to the real recordings, as the artist intended either
 :rofl:

And of course there’s not a peep about configuring Roon’s MUSE, which is the only thing that does affect sound and should be set up correctly.

This, children, is what happens when an audiophile (note how you never see anyone with anything resembling an education in hard sciences being an audiophile) reads some long and fancy-sounding words on the back of a cereal box, and believes himself a networking, software, and systems design expert, without having eny idea about how any of those things work. Don’t be like that, children!

1 Like
#30

Thanks for explaining. I tried, but it seems to automatically reset itself back to the right port. In that short meantime I didn’t perceive an audible difference. Anyway and for now, I’m quite happy with the improvements thus far.

#31

I understand, many of us are not sound engineers, not all of us have designed measuring intrument in the audio field and not all of us have extrapolated harmonics from complex sounds (FFT) to understand the nature of the defect we want to detect.
For this reason one is skeptical if one tries new settings and discovers that they improve listening.
Many also don’t know that removing unnecessary tasks or tasks that you don’t want to use increases the efficiency of a CPU and all its peripherals.
Obviously, things like HDR settings are not inherent to the Roon, just setting recommendations.

However, different opinions are always welcome, but if you only want to use Roon for library management and not audio processing, then you should have a little humility and try my settings

1 Like
#32

After reading through your post, I can understand certain things, but I see some points as not really influencing (and my thoughts are only for my RS150):

Point 2
PC System settings:
Instead of having a PC with Windows 11 use R.O.C.K when its really a dedicated for Roon.
No Microsoft Crap, with hundreds of unused drivers and apps.
Turnig off the Wifi, Audio and things, do nothing, because the hardware is mostly built on the Motherboard, and running in the background, with pre-loaded drivers. So you can simply turn it back on without rebooting.

My Server runs together with other services on my Working machine (i713700 / 64GB RAM etc) and Windows 10. Its nice to have all stuff local, when ripping CDs etc.
I did a check with ROCK and could sonically speaking not hear any difference.

Point 3
Optical Fiber Links do not be necessary short - lenght should not have any influence. Its light.
CAT 8 cables are thick and not very flexible - Cat 7 is sufficient.
And for music streaming - 10 Gbps LAN is an overkill - and does not bring anyhting except cost.
1 Gig Optical is sufficient - but I understand, that the price difference is small - I would go the same way.

Point 4
I did not take all of your optimizing things, some were already setup , and this for a good reason:
I left most the Roon Server things ON - and there was just a subtle difference - nothing worth to further think about it.
I use ARC when I’m not at home - and this does nothing to the Roon Server.
A recent Backup helps to minmize the outage in case of a corrupted Roon Update (happend already 2x). My major regard with Roon is useability. 10 GB/s between Roon Core and NAS, 1 GB/s in direction of my Setup Room - SW-8 Switch is next to the Rose. (wanted the SW-10, but i must wait until i find one). Not willing to get an additional switch, when my RS150 cannot profit (no SFP).

these are just some points I would different, but thanks for the work, to write down - it will help a lot of people to better understand.

I am pretty sure, that other modification in the setup will have a much higher impact on sound.
Things like Room Acoustic Treatment, Wiring (not only the Ethernet ones),

@fittebd
If the Grimm had a larger Display, I’d consider this one as a real option - the 1-4-All Solution.
But for the 18k you can do a lot of other stuff.

Its like everywhere: Ask 5 Persons - get 5 different answers - so the approach to test settings or the further recommendations by @Giubio and others here will help anyone, to have his rig setup in a way that you can be happy with it, and then stop concentrating on technical stuff and enjoy music instead -
I use my setup to listen to music, I don’t use music to listen to my gear :upside_down_face:
Wish you all a good rest of the week

1 Like
#33

With roon display is just an add on. Says the guy who uses roon with RS130. But I bought it for its functionality not the screen honestly.

The Grimm is an all in one system that does everything at an exceptional level. Roon server, 8TB storage, DAC and Preamp. Many use it with amps and speakers. If It had a bypass I would be looking at it. Get rid of many boxes and many expensive cables

But I have to agree with @aswiss and @BorisM on some of their points. These settings seem to be nothing to effect roon. And yes do a rock. It’s so much easier. Build and forget. There are other sites I have seen with recommended settings that make more sence and I have followed.

1 Like
#34

One is even more skeptical when someone quite obviously not knowing how networks work, or what a synchronous vs. asynchronous transmission is, starts telling people which irrelevant setting is supposed to magically improve sound quality. Messing up proper Roon functioning, and neglecting any of the settings that do affect sound.

You
 might burn 1 Euro worth less of electricity in a year. But it will have no effect of efficiency of anything. Or sound quality.

For what purpose? You turn HDR on when watching a movie, playing a game, or working on high-end photo editing. Nobody wants it even when doing normal computer work. Oh, and you’ve just introduced some extra noise into the system because now your CPU and video card work harder moving far more data around.

I have more than half a dozen Roon endpoints, at all price and quality levels, with Roon running carefully tuned room correction convolutions for most of them. I know how to do audio processing in Roon. None of your recommended settings do anything for audio quality. Even if something like extra CPU activity etc. were affecting it for directly attached devices, you have completely eliminated any chance of that being an issue by using a networked endpoint. On a fiber connection at that.

I have no issue with someone preferring censored and bowdlerized versions of tracks, if they want it, even if I would never do that, but the rest of your recommendations are just preventing Roon from working properly. And are totally unnecessary – your NUC is already a total overkill for any but the largest Roon libraries.

They are also shielded, and only serve to introduce ground loops into the equipment chain. And have no advantage over Cat 5e unless you are trying to run 40Gb links.

There is no such thing as a Cat 7 cable you can plug into any home equipment. Cat 7 uses different connectors (one of the many reasons why nobody in the real world gives a damn about Cat 7). If anyone sold you a “Cat 7” cable that you can plug into anything Rose makes, or any computer sold for home use, you’ve been swindled. Cat 6 is completely sufficient for anything. Even Cat 5e for short runs.

Much better use would be to put the NAS on a 10Gb connection (not sure about 923+, but my 1522+ supports 10Gb copper add-on, which improves performance for multiple uses), or at least a LAG, if it has multiple network ports.

ROCK is great for people who can’t or won’t do more than boot from a flash drive. For anyone who can operate a regular PC, it is really too limited. There are no ways to manage or monitor it, and really, I would not ever use a desktop computer running a (quite crappy, really, Roon’s choice there is
 odd) database that corrupts itself even when everything is well easily, without having it connected to a UPS and shutting itself down gracefully when the power goes out. You can’t do that with ROCK. If you can assemble a NUC and fiddle with software, might as well put a slightly less castrated Linux distro on it, if you don’t want to do Windows, and have a far more resilient system.

#35

Finally!!!


someone who still thinks and sees it realistically, like @Boris and I.

Great post, aswiss
 :clap:t2: :clap:t2: :clap:t2: :+1:t2:

:v:t2:

2 Likes
#36

Limited for what? My rock has been running solid since 2020. Nothing to manage. That’s the beauty of it. I have usb hard drive wired up for a backup and it’s plugged into an ups. Long power outage sure it came down. But always powered right back up. Having an OS that needs to be upgraded is just added support. I am an IT professional of 35 years. I am a manager of 40+ systems and believe me I know about support and what is needed. If I could have all my systems work like a rock my cio would promote me 2 seconds. It’s just not needed extra work.

Not sure what you need to monitor and what db gets corrupted differently than if running on windows or mac. If you are referring to that setting for back up being turned off yeah don’t agree with that recommendation. I have never had mine get corrupt but it’s backed up nightly and roon tells me if that is not working speaking of monitoring.

I just don’t get why I would want to hassle with an OS when there is one designed to upgrade itself on its own that is slim and sleek and optimized to run the software. By the way I believe it’s the recommended method by roon. The others I think were put in place so people would not have to buy anything new to get roon up and running. Get the hook in and get people seeing what it can do. Then move to dedicated hardware. Just my opinion obviously but it’s why I think they do it.

#37

It is interesting to observe that some responses to the various points are imbued with a sense of challenge, sometimes with rather offensive tones, as if it were a competition between super experts.

No, not really

I am not in competition with anyone, nor do I let myself be led to show off the number of neurons

My intention is not to teach others how to set up Roon.
My intention is to show how “I” set up Roon


And I must say that, what I wanted to achieve, I achieved.
Now I use Roon for management of the library and I leave the processing (almost) exclusively to the RS130.

Roon’s impact is no longer perceptible, now my system sounds as if Roon wasn’t there.

Other secondary considerations such as PC set for minimum overhead, video set for HDR, Cat 8 ethernnet cables are not inherent to the roon, but still impact the quality of the entire listening environment.

Many of the answers made me smile.
Thinking that reducing a PC’s background tasks to a minimum is only useful to save a dollar a year or thinking that a CAT 8 generates ground loop problems is an unfounded popular belief.

But everyone can calmly stand on their own positions, always with mutual respect.

Today I once again spent about 4 hours to exclude and re-include some Roon setting parameters.
In the end I concluded that the one published a couple of days ago is the one that - in my system - introduces the least influence of Roon in the LHY SW6 SFP + RS130 + RD160 chain

An example that you too can experiment with:
Try listening to these three songs with the default roon parameters and with the parameters set by me and then listen again and again

With Roon’s default processing in some passages pops and snaps are generated which highlight clock misalignment between PC and RS130 (RAAT
 ?..), in others cases I experiment lack of details.
With my settings these disturbances disappear completely.

The songs to try are:

  • Pop and snaps
  1. Dream Theater, Metropolis, PT.2 Scenes from a Memory, Scene Five: Through Her Eyes @ 00:37
  • Deep distortions in the bass range and total lack of details in the bass guitar attacks
  1. Nick Mason, Live at the Roundhouse, Obscured by Clouds @ 00:35 and @ 02:48
  • Loss of detail in drum roll
  1. The Rolling Stones, Stiky Fingers (remastered), Wild Horses (2009 Mix) @ 02:11

It may be that these gaps caused by Roon only occur in my system, but this is precisely why I set the parameters as indicated.

1 Like
#38

For me only times I saw gaps were when my convolution filter was trying to apply to any DSD above 128. The processor simply could not keep up. pause, play, pause play
 if I turn off the filter (which I use for room correction) it worked fine.

Pops and ticks I had early on with my beta software on my PSAudio MKII DAC. it was a DAC issue with streamer. and others had it and some did not. They fixed it with later updates.

1 Like
#39

Yes, normally, it just runs. But then you seem to know what you are doing, and for people who know Roon runs fine on anything usually. But sometimes it doesn’t. Roon forum is full of horror stories.

The problem is that Roon (and users) want to treat ROCK, or Nucleus, as an appliance. But it is still a computer, running rather run of the mill Linux. While it works, it’s great. Then you get enough dust in it that it overheats and starts throttling. Except that there’s no way to find out (no monitoring) so you are pretty much left to open it up, clean it, and see if it helps. When ROCK runs out of memory, it just crashes. By design. If you’re lucky, Roon’s support will pull the logs and tell you, eventually. And, of course, if the power goes out, it can’t shut itself down. Does wonders for LevelDB’s file integrity.

Cound yourself lucky. But then, again, you do know what you are doing. Average Nucleus or ROCK user doesn’t, and it often bites them.

Not really. They would be happy to sell you a Nucleus, with a nice fat margin, of course, and they release the same RoonOS for NUCs (although good luck finding a new NUC on the supported list now), but other OS’s are supported just as well


It’s not a challenge, it’s pointing out what’s wrong with your setup.

With all the analysis turned off?

Except that Roon can do some useful processing, if needed, and 130 can not.

Of course. Because there was no impact in the first place.

Funny thing is that Cat 8 cables can only decrease sound quality by introducing ground loops, and the rest of your settings, at least according to popular audiophile beliefs, would only decrease SQ by introducing extra processing and electrical noise.

Which is the only thing it is useful for, unless you are running out of CPU resources. While in olden times, with Pentium processors, cheesy internal sound cards, and much lower internal clocks, there might have been something to PC noise leaking through to the audio output (and that was usually from mechanical hard drive or CD ROM operation) it is not an issue with your system.

Which is what Cat 8 does. It is by design.

Placebo and Dunning-Kruger effects are very powerful. But if RS130 were in any way affected by some “electrical noise” from the server (it’s not, of course) maybe you should just have bought a better designed streamer, like a Wiim or something?

None of the settings you have posted here change anything in any processing. If you keep fiddling with these parameters yourself, without having any idea what they do, and listen for differences, eventually you will hear whatever you want to her. But it is not real.

This is a prime example of how people who do not know how things work convince themselves of magic


And of course, those were heard as interruptions, not “loss of detail in guitar attacks” and similar meaningless nonsense


#40

100% AGREE. Best thing I did with roon is buy software to build a convolution filter (yes you can use REW for free but its too messy for me) and get room correction. Amazing results.

1 Like