The capability of acting as a UPnP server is a feature of the Naim streamers that Naim and Naim dealers do not advertise, I do not know for which reasons.
Today a 1TB SSD costs very little and in a few months we will have cheap 1TB micro SD cards.
The real challenge will be tagging your music collection, especially if you have a lot of classical music. Unfortunately, most ripping system yield very poor and inconsistent metadata.
I can warmly recommend checking the MinimServer documentation. It is very well written and contains a lot of valuable information and notions on how to organize and tag a music collection.
I see it often said that Roon levels out the difference between local and web streaming.
If so, Roon is a way to not have to buy a NAS at all.
I say this because I’m interested in whether to buy an NAS myself (e.g. the Zenith Mk3) or Roon (which I don’t like because of all the extra gear being always on and heavily processing) or just get a better streamer (which is not relevant to the OP).
Not sure I understand what your’e saying, the Zenith Mk3 will give you a Roon core, I don’t think people are saying the purchase of Roon hardware is what yields the benefit. but I may be wrong and totally missing the point, if so please ignore this.
What I have seen is that quite a lot of Roon users (e.g. SiS et al) say that since using Roon - which is a form of audio software - that local and web streaming sound equally good.
I know that Roon also sells hardware - but you can run Roon on most computers - and as you say also on the Zenith Mk3.
I personally wouldn’t get the Zenith Mk3 to run Roon Core on - at least not initially. I’m considering it as a way to get better SQ from my Tidal web stream (which would run thru it), local streaming from downloads and rips, and CD ripping.
You can run Roon on a NAS, PC, Mac, or an Innuos. I think the point it that many find it delivers sound quality from Tidal that is as good as from locally stored files. That’s quite a separate issue from whether or not you can get better sound quality from an expensive proprietary music store/server or a regular NAS.
It was your reference to extra gear being always on… I took this as a reference to Roon hardware. Yes you can run Roon on a numbers of things. I was looking for a replacement for an ailing UnitiServe and ended up with the Zen, the Roon core dimension was a bonus, albeit one I would be loathe to part with now, It pulls together Tidal, Qobuz and local files effortlessly with great sound quality.
Ah - interesting.
So did you ever compare Tidal streaming direct to your DAC vs Tidal streaming through the Zen before you got Roon?
p.s. what streamer and dac do you have?
Jimdog, other specialists will confirm very probably: Roon improves a lot of things, if you are interested by these improvements, but doesn’t improve the sound quality.
Thats quite a few years ago, I would say I preferred the presentation of the Innuos, of course you can switch the Innuos to uPnP if you want to bypass Roon. I have a couple of Novas.
That’s what I’ve read I haven’t ran Roon on my Mac only on the Innuos but I’m lazy and crap at being a techie so the plug and play aspect was greatly appealing. I agree with your second point it is a separate issue but not one I would offer a valid opinion on.
Jimdog, yes the question is whether real leveling out is achieved or even possible. Not sure if anyone is convinced about this. But yes this would be the ideal solution.
Ok yes this is the question I also have: at its best can qobuz/tidal streaming sound quality be equivalent to a purchased file stored locally on a melco and streamed to the nd?
But I have seen numerous people say that Roon levels out the difference between local and web streaming.
But logically that makes me wonder whether Roon not only brings web streaming SQ up to a certain level, but whether it also brings local streaming down to the same level?
I’ve also seen lots of people say that Roon sounds great and gives great SQ.
And this makes possible sense as Roon contains DSP and room correction and other software processing designed to change SQ - even the dreaded MQA.
So Are some of these processses responsible for the levelling of SQ in Roon, if that is real?
Then many others deny that Roon affects SQ, as FR notes.
It’s all rather mysterious and puts me off Roon.
I would just like the sound as it was recorded if possible.
Yep, I too have held of Room as there is significant disagreement over whether Roon improves SQ. Undoubtedly many like the Roon user experience but I am more interested in SQ and am perfectly happy with the Naim app and the user experience I currently have. Easy to access my local library and with the Tidal integration, easy to stream from Tidal.
I suspect that the SQ from Qobuz will beat Tidal with 24bit streaming. So I am going to wait for the Qobuz integration, compare it to Tidal and make a decision based on SQ and the libraries available from each. It is of course possible that Qobuz could approach or even meet the SQ of local streaming. If it does then I will question the need for local streaming.
However the reliability of my Broadband connection will need to improve vastly before I give up on local streaming. This evening I had two or three periods of several minutes when my internet connection went down. It would have ruined my listening session if I did not have my local streaming resource to rely on.
It depends on implementation and hardware. In particular system noise and number of processes running on core machine. When on a decent NAS it can at least equal Asset for local filed.
Again in my experience SQ on a Roon Nucleus exceeded a well-specced QNAP silent (fanless) NAS.
Depending on the recording/mastering Qobuz Hi-Res files can exceed SQ of local files ( I don’t like Tidal as much, especially MQA).
Before I took the plunge and bought Roon I spent quite a bit of time comparing streaming via the Naim app (Asset on a QNAP NAS) vs Roon playing the same music.
For some reason my expectation was that Asset/QNAP/Naim App would be slightly better but I could not detect any difference whatsoever. This was playing through an NDS/XPS DR.
Had Roon not been as good I would not have moved over. Whilst I wanted Roon to work I was very much ‘looking for trouble’ so if anything expectation bias would have favoured a non Roon solution.
Where Roon does improve is on Tidal, to the extent that Tidal vs local streaming sounds the same to me. This then opens up a really wide catalogue of music to listen to that you wouldn’t necessarily purchase all of it. I still buy the stuff I really like but am not accumulating so much ‘owned’ music these days.
Roon is sending PCM to the NDS so is effectively the original assuming that the original file is original.
Interestingly there used to be a flaw in the web version of Tidal that allowed the download of the music file, un-encrypted. The resulting download was a FLAC file that could be played outside of Tidal.
As an experiment I downloaded a couple of albums and found that if you compared the downloaded file hosted on the NAS and transcoded to WAV using Asset to the same album using Tidal via the Naim application the downloaded and locally streamed file sounded better. I also pushed these downloaded files through Illustrate’s Perfect Tunes program and they passed the accurate rip test.
This allows me to conclude that
Tidal’s files are bit perfect
If you can use something like Roon to proxy the file and stream as WAV then what you play is no different to having a local copy of the file.
So would one get the same uplift to SQ of Tidal/Qobuz streamed files by passing them through an Innuous Zenith or a Melco as one would by passing them through a Roon Nucleus/+?
And what specifically causes the uplift?
How electrically clean the box and cables are?
Is it the transcoding from flac to wav?
The interframe timing issues of the media bursts (to quote SiS)?
It is any of the DSP functions in the case of Roon (or did you have those switched off)?