-
seems to miss the endpoint management, dsp, and Roon rock capability.
Thanks man, that's helpful. What end-points do you use? Now that the chromecast audio is discontinued (great little plex endpoints by the way) I'm not sure if I'm going to get stuck in a dead-end, as there's no real replacement for them that I can see. So Roon becomes a more serious option.
freddo-
Now that the chromecast audio is discontinued
Still available from here at the moment.
-
I have a mixture. RME AES card in a mac tower, A&H SQ5, Dynaudio Air 20's, Marantz SA8005, Lavry DA10 and lots of consumer level stuff, Libratone, Airports, Sonos. That's one reason Roon made sense for me.
As an example with Roon I can set conversion to the native rate of the hardware add impulse response files maybe eq or headroom management, volume levelling all calculated at 64bit and up to the highest DSD levels if that floats your boat. It will also do MQA conversion. I don't use MQA but there are some good arguments for having the studio authorise a master and there's information contained in the wrapper that lets your system determine which filters to use etc.
HQPlayer is another interesting piece of software. It has loads of exotic digital filters and you get a chance to listen to the different effects.
Biggest problem with Roon is the price. Once you get past that it's a really good option although Spotify integration would be great. I think Spotify is the better streaming service but I struggle to know what is on Spotify that's not on Tidal because I have no problem finding stuff on Tidal. Maybe Roon just makes it easier to search Tidal.
Mr_Sworld
Airhead
I had a look at Plex and it seems to miss the endpoint management, dsp, and Roon rock capability. With Roon you can see exactly what it's doing with the files from the original bitrate through the dsp and out to the endpoint. This kind of transparency becomes more important if you are using MQA or DSD with exotic convertors.
It's true that the metadata has become more available, Qobuz and Plex are good examples where metadata, booklets etc. are becoming the norm. However, Roon have had a long time including the Meridian Sooloos phase to use the metadata system they created for Roon radio which means less reliance on playlists.
It's probably only a little bit better for a lot more money, like a lot of things in life!
If you end up building a server on an NUC and running a household full of endpoints you are probably getting your moneys worth. I use it to run 2 households full of endpoints with all kinds of convertors and it works very well at that.