Roon vs Lumin app SQ: My exchange with Lumin's Peter Lie

[JaideepGiridhar]

Since many roon enthusiasts are on the thread, a question to you all.

From the context of sound quality, does Roon bring anything to the table?

Lets say, you have a Lumin device with a properly isolated networking system, will adding roon give you anything apart from the interface and music management?

The short answer, as a guy who owns two Lumins, is "no".

 

[reignofchaos]

Maybe lumin roon endpoint implementation is bugged?
This may well be true by a process of elimination. I find several Lumin owners in the Roon Community say they're unhappy with the combo. There don't seem to be as many complaints from people who use other streamers. I've been offered an Innuos Zen streamer+LPSU stack to audition. I'll see how that goes.

But I had an SOtM SMS 200 Neo+SOtM sPS-500 before I switched to Lumin and Roon just didn't do it for me. The rest of my setup remained the same (I switched from Roon to Audirvana, which has shoddy UI, but better SQ).

Funny I use the same with roon 200 Neo + PS 500 + TX-USB Ultra. With roon/hqplayer upsampling feeding my DAC 200, it sounds superb!

 

[MSLokesh]

Such a bliss to live in a cave and streaming on Audiolab using play fi app. Me still a happy person

 

[drkrack]

Since many roon enthusiasts are on the thread, a question to you all.

From the context of sound quality, does Roon bring anything to the table?

Lets say, you have a Lumin device with a properly isolated networking system, will adding roon give you anything apart from the interface and music management?

Does Expensive Whisky Glass or Wine Glass bring anything additional to your enjoyment of Same Whiskey or Wine?
Well the presentation matters for me personally. Ease of use and intuitive UI are biggest USP in my experience.
Barring that, The options of Upsampling, Parametric EQ, Volume Leveling & Roon ARC are Ocassionally useful depending on individual use cases.

@JaideepGiridhar roon core is quite important, I've tried Laptop, MacBook, Mac Mini Intel, Synology NAS as Roon Core and also Mac Mini M1. Mac's faring worst & Intel Nuc as RoCK is the best; from SQ standpoint & also this is what I can afford easily, so Quite happy with this.
Lumin app sounds good if your setup is overtly warm, but other than that Roon app is best in my experience. SQ dynamics, emphasis seems to be better with Roon app. Just make sure your Roon Core and Endpoint don't connect to same Switch.

 

[JaideepGiridhar]

I must admit I was wrong about my approach to Roon. Thanks to @drkrack and @Phew, I read up on how to go about integrating it into my chain to maximise both sound and UI. Apart from wanting to give Roon one last shot and determining if I was extracting the most out of it, my other concerns were a) How much I'd have to invest if I got hold of a dedicated server, which would then influence b) If I could hold on to my MacMini for computing, downloads etc.

@drkrack put me in touch with a techie in Pune who had an Intel NUC for sale (Lenovo P330; i3800 with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD, at 10.5K); he even asked the guy to install Roon ROCK (it's a fairly simple process, listed here: https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/rock-install-guide) before shipping the unit. All I had to do was run a few updates, and the thing was good to go.

I won't go into the UI, because it's almost universally accepted that Roon has it nailed down. It was performance that mattered. Straight of, the sound characteristics were far superior to those that I'd heard with the MacMini. Second, and more importantly, they were marginally better than with the Lumin control software.

I wouldn't spend a lakh+ to get hold of a Roon Nucleus (or any other comparable, built-for-Roon server), but the rig I now have is more than worth it. This one's a keeper.