Psychology is a wondrous thing. Some people are convinced that Bose speakers sound good, and cables can change sound, too. In this case though, ther can’t be any difference and there is none.
I have a RS150B which is connected (IIS) to a external DAC and both Roon and Rose App . When I switch between those two I hear a difference.
So what you say is that I am imagine the difference. It isn’t there, when I clearly can hear the difference.
What is your gounds to say “ther can’t be any difference and there is none” when I obviously hear the difference.
Did some more testing today and did notice the Roon app is playing less loud than the Rose app
So this can be the reason the Rose app seems to have better quality just because it’s playing louder.
Tomorrow I will see if I can let both play at the same volume so it’s easier to compare
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Rose app (or, really, the Rose itself when you use the app to tell it to play a file from storage) plays the file exactly as it is. Roon can apply all sorts of DSP adjustments to the signal. If you have, say, headroom adjustment enabled in Roon it will play slightly quieter. Which will be perceived as being lower quality, even though it is not. And Roon is capable of applying far more changes that can do pretty much anything to the sound.
If, however, there is no DSP (Muse they brand it now) applied, Roon sends exactly same data to the DAC. Anything after that is pure, quite well understood math. Despite what sellers of overpriced cables, Ethernet degenerators, and other useless crap would want you to believe, as long as that data is delivered to the DAC in time to avoid buffer underruns (which is more difficult with source-clocked I2S, but then there is never any good reason to use I2S for inter-device connection anyway) DAC will apply the same math to it and generate the same output. That can (and has been) tested many times by plugging a scope into DAC outputs and comparing what is being generated.
If the software (any software, be it Rose’s built-in player, Roon, JRiver, Audirvana, Foobar, or anything else) is not doing some processing on the source, there is no physical or mathematical mechanism that could create any difference. So, either all the people who had actually developed quite successful theory and practice behind digital audio are completely wrong, or… there is no difference.
What had also been demonstrated many times is that a sighted test, which is what you appear to have done, is absolutely useless for determining whether there is or is not any difference. If one knows that something they believe affects the sound has been changed, they will hear the change, whether anything has been really changed or not. Conversely, people will not hear a difference even when it quite clearly exists if they believe that what was being changed does not affect the sound. There have been some quite interesting experiments done on that.
In this particular case, I absolutely believe that you hear (as in perceive it; it’s a psychological phenomenon) a difference when switching software. Does that difference exist objectively (outside of your perception)? No. Unless you are applying some processing in Roon, or 150 allows you to have different volume levels for Rose Player vs. Roon inputs, electric signal generated by the DAC is the same in both cases, and gets converted into the same sound waves by your speakers. If it were any different, modern world would not exist – all the science underpinning it would have been wrong.
That would be the only reason there could be any perceived difference in quality. Are you applying any headroom adjustments in Roon?
I have calibrated the volume to the same level (no DSP on Roon) and still hear (imagine 
) a difference in many aspects to Rose apps advantage.
The problem is that I so much wanted Roon to at least sound as good as the Rose app because Roon has the best interface when playing and finding music.
I am not trying to convince you, but in my view I can hear things that can not be measured like depth, separation and stereowidth in the music that comes out of my speakers.
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Hi, no I haven’t. All off
But maybe you are right and it’s inside your head.
Will try to do some blind tests next week 
I believe this article needs reviewing, as to where we stand today. Recently Roon is overhauled with clearly distinguishable sound improvements as a result.
I too will shortly do some blind testing, if only to convince myself.
Psychology is a wondrous thing. Unconscious expectations account for more differences in perceived sound quality than anything physical (within reason, of course but still…). Can we see your signal path though?
They can all be measured, actually. Timing, phase differences etc. But those do not change if you give the DAC the same signal.
Given how many people swear that magic crystals, replacement power cables, green CD markers, etc., etc work, yes, it is far more likely to be in one’s head than assuming that our entire understanding of the natural world is completely wrong.
Figures
Every time there is a Roon update, there’s a flood of posts that sound had chnaged, even if thee audio code hasn’t been touched. People will believe anything.
That would be a great surprise to Roon Labs as they have always maintained (quite reasonably) that there can’t be, and aren’t, any changes to (bit-perfect path’s) sound quality. One would think that they should know…
As I wrote, my expectations was that i would like Roon to sound better than the Rose app because i like Roon so much better than The Rose app. That seems a little backward regards what you are saying.
My signal path is:
NAS (Flac) => Ethernet => EtherRegen switch (served by an external clock) => HiFi Rose RS150B (as a streamer) => Topping DX9 (as a dac) => Schiit Freya+ (preamplifer) => Parasound Halo H21 (poweramplifier) => Martin Logan ESL (speaker) and REL subwoofer. And of course 
a lot of exotic cables. The signal path is the same for both Roon and Rose app
I give the DAC the same signal (calibrated of course), and still I can pinpoint the difference where the guitarplayer is playing within 1 meters difference when I compare Roon and Rose app playing the same music.
The question is, is there a difference because Roon an Rose app handles the signal different. I surely hope that you don’t claim that they don’t. Because how would you know.
Psychoacoustics mostly works on subconscious expectations. But you were expecting difference where there shouldn’t be any in the first place. So you heard a difference.
I mean the signal path from Roon, you get it if you click on the little star in the bottom playback control section.
In a blind test? If you really can, and I am being quite serious, we should pack you up and send you to Sweden, because this is, literally, a Nobel prize level discovery.
Both are supposed (assuming no DSP, no up/downsampling in Roon, and using RAAT rather than say Airplay in Roon) to deliver exact same bits to the DAC. How it gets there should not matter according to all the science used to design these DACs. Science could be wrong, of course, but then DACs would not work, and they clearly do.
Sure, it would be great to find some new law of nature, but you need to do it properly. In this case it means at least a proper blind test to prove that there is an audible difference. Then we can have professionals try to come up with an explanation how the exact same data being fed into a determenistic device like DAC can produce different response across channel for a guitar, and guitar only, and not anything else in the same frequency range.
Not saying that it is categorically impossible, but it does seem quite unlikely, whereas hearing a difference due to some unconscious expectation bias is not only highly possible, but has been demonstrated time and time again. Happens to everyone, subjectivists and objectivists equally, because it is a part of human nature.
I live in Sweden, so I don’t have to travel so far to get my Nobel prize. But I doubt that I can get a Nobel prize for believing what I hear.
To end this discussion we leave it to the conclusion that you believe in science and measurements and I believe in what I hear and everybody is happy.
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Thanks. The path does look clean.
For believing, no. But for demonstrating that there is a difference, rather than believing in it, that’s anotther matter. It would be big.
Might as well, these discussions rarely convince anyone of anything. You can’t really have a discussion with some objective repeatable facts vs. beliefs…
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Forgive my ignorance, but where is the ‘Roon’ core programme residing? On a computer or Roon Nucleus?
This has got to have an effect on the variations in sound quality you are hearing?
In the end, just enjoy the music and forget about all the figures.
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Nope, none whatsoever. (And Nucleus is just an overpriced computer anyway)
So where is Roon residing?
Roon is residing on a computer. Whether it be a laptop, a nas or a nucleus. Depending on that choice of device, your system’s resolution and choice of interconnect, there may be quality differences due to high frequency interference.
Interconnects (unless they are of some super-pricy audiophile brand and do not follow any of the USB specs) have no effect here, though. And the digital data is high frequency noise. It would be very strange if the DAC was rejecting whatever analogue noise is die to data itself, but passing through significantly lower-level “other” noise. Not that one could her anything in MHz range anyway.
Low-frequency noise at high levels would be more of a concern but has generally been solved for many year as well.
I wrote this in another thread here: Roon comparistion and questions. So, I’m in the same mess as other users with Roon here and found no solution, so far. Take it as another confirmation, that Roon is laking SQ vs. direct streaming…
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