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I’ve only got two (Roon) endpoints at home so far. One is the Mac mini itself in the office. I just hooked it up via the audio jack to this Topping TP22 class D amp I had kicking around and some £20 JPW mini monitors sat on the oak desktop. Really pleased with it, might look at a DAC in due course as the Mac can do optical out.
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New music has been the main thing for me too. I was struggling to find new music. Apple music was just starting and I didn't have any kind of subscription based music service so I was using you tube etc. to listen to new stuff, it wasn't helping much.
I'm not sure Tidal on it's own would have been enough to get me digging, all the music is there but Tidal presents the pop/rap genres front and centre. Qobuz is much better in terms of decent playlists / adult listening focus, it's also integrated with Roon, only downside is it's the same cost for a lower quality mp3 vs flac.
Roon has just added a suggestion feature which brings even more to the table, the radio is great for some genres but I think they are improving that whole side of Roon using Roon users data!
Having said that I'm also buying and selling physical records so I'm previewing releases and using Tidal until they arrive and that is also keeping me listening to a lot of different music.
Just had a look and the lifetime sub has gone up to $699. It's seems like they are setting their stall out not to be dropping prices. Roon staff have commented on the forum that they regularly discuss dropping the lifetime model all together as they would rather have the subscriptions. It does seem mad compared to most music player software but I don't think anything else offers the features.
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The DAC side is a proper rabbit hole. I started years ago with a simple usb dac, now I'm running lots of different digital systems, too many to think about really. Optical is handy to isolate from computer earth loops but a lot of the higher end dacs don't have it as an input so you might do better on the usb side.
I can recommend the gustard U12 usb->aes device, really good isolation and solid power supply, then you can run aes to something like a Lavry DA10 or some RME/Motu interfaces are decent value. I'm only going up to 96/24. I do have a marantz sacd which does dsd but my main speaker systems are digital and 96/24 so there's minimal if any gains to be had from dsd conversion. The Gustard will handle dsd if you need it though.
One thing that has impressed me with Roon is the ability to authorise and un-authorise different locations depending on where you want your licence to be working. If I go to my second location it checks to see if I have another location running and I can de-authorise it but it's not crazy demanding, sometimes it will allow 2 locations to operate for a short period of time and the change over is quick and painless anyway. It was one aspect that had worried me but they have it working perfectly.
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Tidal offer - £5 for 5 months for any subscription including their "HiFi" subs.
https://tidal.com/try-now?campaignId=5de986d679c686003235ab72
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My Tidal experience in a nutshell:
'Here! Have some really mainstream pop and rap music!'
'But Tidal, I would like something interesting and a bit more niche and perhaps even other genres.'
'Tough! Our shareholders all make pop and rap music so this is what you shall see on the front page every time you open the app.'
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Had to read that twice, saw sneakers not speakers.
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I'm sticking with Roon and Apple Music.
Created a little workflow on my iMac, everything that I add to a folder, XLD converts to ALAC, and moves to library folder
Roon and Apple Music pick these up and Apple music sends it up into my cloud library thing, google drive syncs it to my files backup.
It also converts to MP3 320 in another folder and whenever I connect my Sony A45 it copies everything in this folder to the SD card and cleans up after itself.
Maybe seems painful, but seems to work pretty smooth now, I only store ALACs locally and everything is safely backed up
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Need a before and after.
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How do they sound?
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really good, now that i have shifted them around a bit. bigger scale and a more open sound than the eatons, but the eatons are a bit more refined. the eatons have been recapped and had the crossovers upgraded though.
they a bit underwhelming at first, as i have them out and in the room, but they were too close together. back and in the alcove like that is not ideal, but they need to be that far apart.
they go looooow as fuck, too.
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Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new
Posted by
@coppiThat
I am using Roon and Tidal on my Mac mini. I really love it, the considering life upgrade, am only a month into the first year.
I’ve listened to more new music (*that I like) than in that last few years combined! For me, that’s what it’s all about. Thanks for the recommendation!