I know the Roon team have a few days off due to Thanksgiving. But they also seem to be notoriously hard to reach judging the Roon Community forum. My experience with them is OK.
My Roon Server runs 24/7 as I am also using Roon ARC to listen to my music on my iPhone while at work. 87k track total library of which 68k are stored on the portable USB drive connected to it. The rest are Qobuz and Tidal favorites.
Apart from the update bug, which is apparently under review, it runs great.
Before this turns into a Roon discussion forum.
Audirvana won’t work with your Bluesound devices from one central Mac Mini where you stream to different devices. I don’t think Audirvana matches your requirements.
You should consider to use Roon Rock instead of MacOs for using Roon. Getting it installed may be a hassle, but you have two potential options here:
With Roon Rock or a Nucleus you won’t experience the troubles you have now.
Yes. But I believe that’s what OP already assumed. That for his Audirvãna subscription he’d need other hardware than the current Nodes.
Where it comes to Roon with Mac, although ROCK might make a big difference in SQ, his current set up should work.
That’s how I understand the issues encountered.
As for Roon being discussed here, personally I don’t have a problem with that. But I agree that it isn’t the most logical place.
No. Using Rock or a Nucleus means that any roll outs done by Roon won’t lead to the technical and support issues that are described in the first post. It is the most logical pathway to forgo these issues and have peace of mind. That’s my message.
For any ‘should work’ remarks in technological environments. Well… Although I love Audirvana it isn’t the most technical stable app I know.
I understand your point. And with that you are absolutely right where it comes to stability of the Roon set up.
What I am trying to say is that the current set up of the OP meets the requirements for Roon to presumably work. Whether they actually do, is another matter.
Stability of Audirvãna has approved the last year significantly though, especially since the development of the Core Player from which the Mac and Windows versions seem to have benefited as well. But that’s maybe more in my imagination.
May I ask some advice regarding my own set up?
I know it is probably not the most efficient at this moment where it comes to jitter.
I use Audirvãna for streaming. It’s installed on an old Dell laptop. The laptop is connected to an EE8 Switch by ethernet cable. I have connected my Naim ND5 XS 2 with an ethernet cable as well to that switch. The switch is connected to my router.
The ND5 XS 2 is connected with a DIN cable to my Naim Nait 1.
I would say that with streaming local files from an external Seagate HDD connected to the PC, that that HDD is the source and with streaming Qobuz Qobuz is the source. Audirvãna is the interface (possibly with enhancement).
What is the easiest, most effective and pricewise (think of a tight budget) the best solution to reduce jitter?
I would opt to replace the dell with a mini PC that has an external power supply, preferably running on 12 Volt, and replace the power supply with a good power supply. If the mini PC has sufficient disk space, 1 Tb is cheap these days, place those files on the PC.
If you feel very adventurous, use a light weight Linux distribution like DietPi as the OS and Audirvana Core as the player, or if that is too technical you can buy a mini PC with Windows and use the Windows version.
Alternative would be a QNAP or Synology NAS instead of a mini PC.
That probably gives you the biggest uplift in sound quality.
Thank you, it sure is very helpful and it confirms my expectations. If the choice was between a Synology NAS or a Mini PC, what would you recommend?
You need to put this assertion into context…
I have been using Audirvāna in various states of its evolution, and do not find your statement to have credence… It is as reliable as Apple’s production software Logic, on macOS… My playback devices are connected via USB… I agree there are distributed digital-audio, via networked UPnP protocol host/device anomalies/instabilities, for various reasons and incongruences, typically associated to irregular implementation of UPnP protocol by various manufacturers among other electronics and mechanical gremlins that influence the digital-audio signal along the network signal-path.
Would have to agree with your comment. Think your success with Audirvana or Roon comes down to your use case complexity and configuration.
For me the time since I last incurred a problem with Audirvana Studio with crashes or playback interuptions/hiccups that were directly attrbutable to Studio is measured in years, not days, weeks or months. I use USB to a DAC/Headphone amp probably 50% of the time and 50% is spent streaming over UPnP to Chord Electronics or KEF devices without any issues of playback interuptions/truncation or the app suffering an issue and that is whilst upsampling (occasionally to DSD 256)
I also have Roon installed on an M2 MacBook Air with 16 GB Ram and 2TB SSD which I use as a test machine, I do this solely to monitor changes to see if it manages to catch up to Audirvana in my personal preferences for a player. Roon has much more functionality which is reflected in a significantly larger and more complex codebase. This complexity also results in significantly greater internet traffic and RAM usage. I have come across the “Uh-Oh Something Has Gone Wrong” or “Too Many Errors” message with Roon but it is also relatively rare.
The number of issues people have which are reported on forums has to be referenced to the size of the user base. In both cases I think the people experiencing problems are a very low percentage indeed. In my use case for Audirvana Studio I would say it is one of the most stable applications I use on a daily basis…
The mini PC with a CPU that consumes not so much power, running dietPi Linux, used exclusively for Audirvana and with an SBooster or Farad power supply (both power supplies result in a different stereo image, don’t ask me why. Both are great).
But this is my personal preference. Yours might be different, or you have other great use for a NAS. The NAS solution is by far the easiest. Get one with more than 2Gb of memory.
Thx again, greatly appreciated!
Thank all of you who took my original question and turned into a long educational dialog. I learned a lot from it, not the least of which is that Audirvana users are a generous supportive community.
I finally heard back from Roon tech support giving me a solution. At least I have something now to try other than fingerpointing to Apple. I’ve had issues with Apple, but I think their tech support is the best.
Anyhoo, I will be using Audirvana more and maybe even invest in some new hardware to replace the Bluessound Nodes that are great but don’t work with Audirvana. This is a good group.
You’ll probably won’t regret it!
Figured yesterday I’d best play around with an even older Windows device to see if I could get the Linux Core Player to work.
That has been quite easy and fun. Long live Chat GPT. First I removed Windows and installed Linux Mint XFCE. Then installed the specific Linux version. All running within 2 hours and then have been testing for stability.
After a couple of hours, I figured I could go for my current Windows laptop on which I had Audirvāna running. I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon on that, given that my wife occasionally uses it for some Word documents.
No issues again, and therefore now I am a happy listener to Audirvāna on a Linux laptop.
Now I was hoping you could give some further insight that could help me forward.
Current situation:
Question:
Would an external PS such as you suggested give the same advantage with the laptop over the native PS that came with the laptop?
Thanks in advance!
Laptop power supplies are regularly pretty heavy in terms of current output. It is hard to find power supplies made for audio devices that deliver that much current and that won’t cost you more than the price of a new laptop.
So then I’ll better spare me some money.
Next step will be the Mini PC then. My wife can use the old laptop still, and I will get my upgrade.
Good to have a clear path ahead. Thank you!