Which one are you using? I looked at REW, but… do I want to spend that much time on it? So I got Focus Fidelity and it does a very nice job.
Same here. Focus Fidelity. I have not updated in 18months so I am looking forward when carpet comes next week to get that up and running in new room.
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Nice. I imagine as long as you do not move things around or add carpeting there isn’t much need to redo it. Keep the original measurements, in case I want to change the target curve.
Diff house diff room diff wall treatments. I have to redo it
Second test in progress.
For testing, I have installed the Roon Server in my Synology DS923+ NAS
The NAS, at purchase time, has been upgraded with
- a 10 Gbps Ethernet port,
- 32 GB of RAM,
- 2 x 1TB NVMe 970 EVO Plus internal SSDs
- 4 x 8TB Samsung SSDs for data storage
Music data copied on NAS SSD
The Roon parameters are currently set to their default.
The NAS is far from the HiFi setup so the fan noises are non audible
The NAS is linked to the HiFi via Fiber Optic @ 10Gbps, Microtick switch at the NAS side, LHY SW 6 SFP at the HiFi side
The first listening impression is excellent.
I will make comparisons RS130 with/without Roon in the next few days
The NAS power supply is the classic economical switching that is supplied by Synology.
I’m wondering if it will be worth purchasing an Ultra Low Noise power supply for the NAS
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Some people just never learn… Or even want to learn.
Some people have a poor sense of humor, a tendency towards cryptic messages, and little electronic education.
if a person feels the urgent need to constantly criticize, to be effective he must express his technical opinion in queues and clear words, not with humorous emoticons
Using electronic components already existing in my electronic laboratory, I set up a 14 VDC 10 A linear power supply.
For this initial phase, it is not stabilized, but being redundant in power when the NAS runs at maximum power it does not drop below 12 VDC.
With the same test power supply I also power the Microtik switch which is nearby.
The standard Synology power supply is 12.6 VDC 8 A and with a 40 MHz oscilloscope it shows very low ripple but very strong interference at 40kHz and its sub harmonic at 20 and 10 kHz.
Although extremely simple and not stabilized, my temporary power supply it does its job very well.
Just a toroidal transformer of 12VCA 120VA (10A), a powerful diode bridge B100A60, a pair of capacitors of 10000 uF 63 VL and 100 nF in parallel.
I still have to do comparative tests but based on the experience made with my first Roon Nucleus in 2021, the Keces P8 power supply had brought tangible improvements to the sound.
If this test with the temporary power supply also improves listening, then I will buy an ultra low noise PS, probably a new generation Keces P14
---- Second Edit ----
Having some MOSFETs available, I added to my temporary power supply four IRF9Z34N MOSFET transistors in parallel biased with a simple OP07 operational IC and a couple of resistors.
The power supply is now stabilized and has a residual ripple of only 0.35 mV, which makes this improvised power supply of mine a real Ultra Low Noise.
This, however, does not exempt me from purchasing a Keces P14 because to properly engineer the definitive power supply it is necessary to purchase the container, the mains filters, do the assembly etc. In the end the final cost of the DIY power supply risks being expensive as a commercial product.
But the test served to confirm that a linear power supply can truly and seriously improve listening.
I don’t know how much this improvement affects the NAS in detail, because my temporary power supply is also powering the Microtik Switch.
It doesn’t matter, the improvement is significant and for now it is enough for me to make decisions about purchasing a Keces P14
But…there is a doubt…
This morning, for a couple of times, when changing a song, the Roon Server installed in the NAS “jammed”.
This phenomenon has never happened to me with the Roon installed on the miniPC or years ago in my old Roon Nucleus…
The power supply has nothing to do with it because the two jams occurred in test phases, one with and one without the linear feeder.
I think the reason is the location of the library folder.
I will try to move the music storage folder from the 8TB Samsung SSD to the 1TB NMVe 970 SSD used by the NAS OS.
Third solution will be to move the folder to an external SSD as Roon suggests.
While I opened the NAS I also decided to replace the two cooling fans which are very noisy.
As recommended by various users of the DS923+, a valid alternative are the fans made in Austria, the Noctua NF-A9, a silent premium quality fan (max 22 dB @ 2 krpm).
I just ordered them and they will arrive tomorrow
Not related to Roon:
A) Acoustic treatment of the listening room:
A set of ViCoustic panels will arrive next week to treat my listening room. I’ll get to the details:
n. 6 panels 60 x 60 cm ViCoustic Multifuser Wood MKII Black Matte (omnidirectional dispersion of the low range). Placed on the front and rear walls
n. 3 panels 120 x 60 cm ViCoustic 3D Vic-Shape Gray (mid-High range absorber). Placed on the left wall
n. 2 panels 60 x 60 cm ViCoustic Vic Pattern Ultra Wavewood MKII walnut color (mid-High range absorber), placed on the right wall.
B) Left-Right channel balancing
I ordered a set of 8 x EL34 tubes paired and selected, original PrimaLuna, to balance the volume of the two mono channels EVO 400 Power amplifier. The left channel has a slightly lower volume than the right channel and the phenomenon is reversed if I invert the two amplifiers.
By mixing the EL34s in pairs between the two amplifiers, I should be able to balance the two volumes. Note that Primaliuna amplifiers have tube bias which is self-calibrating.
I read the volume of the two amplifiers with a DIY Vu Meter made by me with an Arduino Giga WiFi microcontroller + Arduino GigaDisplay and a sample frequency of 1000 Hz with a sinusoidal signal injected via a 15VDC cMos level function generator
Summary of my tests.
I honestly still can’t decide.
Every time I return to listening to the RS130 with Rose Connect I feel a sort of anxiety.
I have the vague feeling that all my attempts with Roon settings never pass the listening…without Roon.
I am aware that I have fallen into the trap that leads a music enthusiast into listening to their system rather than the music itself.
But doing tests and counter tests is in my nature as a technician and I can’t do without it
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There’s nothing like having a (very) little education in one narrow area and believing oneself to be an all-knowing audiophile…
That’s not really applicable when dealing with people believing that the earth is flat, moon is made of cheese, network cables affect sound, or that linear power supplies can affect “sound” of a NAS box.
To a Nucleus. Over a network. Uh huh.
Tell it to Rob Watts, he will beat you over the head with a Chord DAC.
Unless you have two identical devices, and someone to switch between them blind (which obviously did not happened) you do not have a test, let alone any improvements.
Something that does happen with servers. Especially if you have disabled half of the necessary background processes.
Roon recommends having the Roon library (no music files there) folder on an SSD drive because there is a lot of random access to it.
On a Synology, adding NVME cache and using it as cache, which is default for Synology, provides the same performance, if it is sized correctly, with an additional benefit of speeding up many other uses.
Music files themselves can be on spinning disks. Unless you manage to dig up an IDE disk from the 90s, even the slowest spinning disk is fast enough for this.
Now, this does make sense. A good quality fan is good both for the longevity of the NAS and keeps the noise down, if you have to keep the NAS where it is audible.
Seriously though… if you run everything through a tube amp with tube sound, worrying about some (alleged) minor differences caused by a neetwork cable or something is silly.
And that’s exactly what you get when doing a sighted test.
Exactly. In this case you are listening to the changes yo made and trying to convince yourself that you are hearing a difference.
As far as hobbies go, it isn’t the worst of course, but it has absolutekly nothing to do with sound quality per se.
But then… you should be aware about proper test design. You need to either measure output at speaker terminals, and null results between two different configurations, or you need to do a real blind test.
Seriously, there isn’t anything wrong with fiddling with cables and power supplies as a hobby. Some people build ships in wine bottles, too. But especially as a technician you must be aware of the difference between some subjective impression and real world effect. And present it as such.
Thanks for another detailed update on your endeavours!
Acoustical treatment is one of the first steps on should take, but with me it also came late. 
I think it make sense to have your music files on different (SSD) drives than Roon and its cache files. I’m having my music still on HDD.
I suggest to look next for LPS’s on your nas and/or router. The noise from the electronics is worse than abiding noise from fans, I would say.
For me, upgrading the router power supply with a lps clearly improved clearity and definition. The nas is next, especially since Roon resides there.
Certainly !
Having very clean power supplies in HiFi is the basis of good listening.
Unfortunately, many people are so skeptical about the topic that they don’t even try to “clean” their power supplies.
Sometimes the reason for skepticism is purely psychological, based on nothing or on popular beliefs. Other times simply because their HiFi setup or their ears or their sensitivity does not distinguish details that others appreciate.
In my work, I had to analyze the sounds generated by aerospace turbines to capture, correct and eliminate harmful centrifugal forces.
I had to analyze the noise of high-speed train wheel bearings to capture any lubrication deficiencies and all this with LabView programming and very expensive hardware equipment
The control thresholds were carried out in dB, extrapolations of harmonics with Fast Fourier Transform, or by comparison with reference sample objects.
These measuring instruments were powered 100% of the time with batteries in series that generated voltages of up to 80/120 VDC, super filtered with sophisticated technical features.
Reason ?
Because the eddy currents generated by traditional power supplies did not allow precise measurements, they simply made the sound measurement cycles ineffective.
On a smaller but similar scale, this also happens in our HiFi systems but some people don’t want to believe it or simply out of an inexplicable contradictory spirit they insist on denying this technical aspect.
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And sometimes the reason is that odd thing called “education.” You may want to try it one day.
Coming from someone with a PrimaLuna tube amp this is utterly laughable on its face. But a standard response of an offended audiophile.
There are also the evil cosmic rays buzzing around and flipping an occasional bit. Believing that something below the level of Brownian motion noise makes audible difference is just audiophilia vulgaris.Pretending that what you have described here is a valid test that proves anything just goes to show that one can operate complicated equipment without having any idea how scientific proof works.
In designing the measuring instrument, before writing the acoustic signal analysis code, software algorithms were applied that measured the PSRR, or the “Power Supply Rejection Ratio”.
Only after the PSRR exceeded the acceptance limits did the software proceed to analyze the source signal.
Texas Instrument (chip manufacturer) and National Instruments (LaView software) have spent years improving PSRR control algorithms.
Our class A/B amplifiers are typically equipped with PSRR control circuits, demonstrating the importance of a DC power supply that is as clean as possible.
With the advent of digital the PSRR has taken on even more importance, because the eddy currents and the residual ripple strongly influence the decoding of the digital signal, forcing continuous correction cycles
Already in the early 60s, building my first tube amplifier with the EL34s of the famous Svetlana, a good part of the electronic circuit was dedicated to the entire PSRR correction.
The more the circuit is feedback, the more the PSRR becomes important.
This brief digression on the PSRR just to underline how important a clean power supply is in the HiFi world.
All this (apparently) has nothing to do with Roon or the RS130, but it helps us reflect on the precautions that need to be applied for their proper functioning
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The world (or at least people who value accurate, transparent, and resolving reproduction of audio) has moved past tube equipment a long time ago.
None of this has anything to do with Roon though, where it is well known that the only settings affecting sound are in the MUSE section. While it is theoretically possible that a device could do some secret sauce thing to make it sound “better” (most likely just a tad louder) when using their own app, that would just be a reason not to patronize that company. And there’s no indiucation that Rose is doing it anyway.
I understand.
The sound of tubes is not for everyone. However there are artists like David Gilmour who still make their recordings with wonderful HiWatts, purely tubes amplifiers, both in the pre and final sections. but as we know, David Gilmour has no musical ear…
Lack of intellectual honesty in audiophiles is quite astonishing…
Firstly, of course, there’s there’s a big difference between music production where the artist may want to do it one way or another, and music consumption where it is usually assumed that you want to hear what the artist intended for you to hear (the whole “fidelity” thing in Hi Fi).
Secondly, of course, tube sound may be quite pleasant. Nobody is arguing personal preferences, at least it is different. Once thing it is not though is anything like “resolving”.
It is really quite entertaining to see audiophiles (translation – people who haven’t heard anything above 12KHz in decades) doing a worthless sighted test where they convince themselves that whatever irrelevant changes they made make some “huge difference.” And as soon as you push back on that, they make a surprised face and start telling people who had both done proper tests and do have systems that are actually “resolving” that it is them who are deaf and can’t reproduce those magical fairy dust differences. Because of course a tube setup (no matter how euphonic) with noise and distortion orders of magnitude higher than anything sane is just the thing to listen to whatever -200dB differences that an SFP module or something allegedly produces…