The decent application servers like I am using do transcoding on the fly, so also with the Naim app you get this done, it actually has nothing to do with the app
Last night I set up Audirvana, pointed it at my NAS library and my Qobuz subscription.
I configured the following:
I used the Audirvana remote app on iPad and sent a set track list to my NDX2, which is connected to my 252/SCDR/300DR B&W 805D3 Prestige Edition set-up.
Music (a selection both hi-res and cd-quality FLACs of local origin as well as from Qobuz) was sent to the NDX2 from Audirvana as a UPnP stream. Audirvana was running on the same system as supports my Roon implementation (a dedicated 2017 Apple MacBook Pro 15â / 3.9Ghz quad core Intel Core i7 running MacOS X Catalina with 16GB RAM, 512 GB SSD / USB 3.0 direct attached Seagate 8TB (160MB/S) Music File Store through Audioquest Jitterbug).
I did A / B testing between Roon 1.7 Core and Audirvana 3.5. RAAT versus UPnP. Everything was equal except the server software (and remote software control).
I found Audirvanaâs control software to be clumsy (especially in the distinction between Qobuz and Local) and the experience to be iTunes like - not in a good way. Roonâs is much more logical, more about the artist and the music and the formats. I prefer Roonâs interface 100 times more than Audirvanas.
As far as sound quality, to my ears I found there to be no difference at all.
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This to me is the only honest test - a blinded test. I have to catch my wife in the right mood for her to indulge me with âmore hi fi testing!â But she does 
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It is not so easy to compare. Roon needs a more powerful music-server that likely intrduce more noise (Roon says they always have their server out-of-room when they eval SQ). Also more heat that may require a fan.
Another factor (this also from the Roon CTO) is the fancy user interface which also require more CPU/GPU in the server to generate (is it webserver HTML/Javascript?).
Nothing of this says anything about SQ under ideal conditions but must be considered when you compare. In fact the Roon CTO admitted that if you have the DAC on USB on the server something like Audirvana might be preferrable as it generated less electrical noise (using the CPU/GPU less).
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I can say on my system that both Roon and UPnP sound pretty much identical. Never analysed them in detail as there has been no need. When I have switched from one to the other I have never gone urggh or wow as it sounded the same. Saying that Tidal streams do sound better via Roon, less harsh and more neutral as a result I really struggle to notice a difference between Tidal and my cd rips, same goes for Qobuz.
I have the recommended Roon setup, dedicated Roon decoupled core, running their OS ROCK, all control is via remote apps on pc, phone and tablet. To me its the best way to run it and get the most out of it.
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Although I use Audirvana in preference to Roon, I donât much care for Its interface: indeed its latest incarnation to me was a downward step - however, I didnât find Roon an improvement despite its cost, the features that Roon fans clearly like not being beneficial to me. In particukar Roon was not as good as Audirvana for music with poor or missing metadata, which is a problem from which my collection suffers. As for sound quality, my own use of Audirvana is different, using it as a renderer feeding by USB direct to a DAC, not using it as a UPnP server. (N.B. Significantly perhaps re Roonâs interface, I donât stream online, only from my own local store.)
Iâve always taken the approach that I want to âownâ the metadata, meaning that I edit it myself to get it as I want it. While that could be daunting if one had a huge library of files with poor or missing metadata, at this point I add albums essentially one at a time, and I take them on a run through a metadata editor, and I download high quality album art.
Yes - but the trouble is that long before I had any idea of streaming I ripped a few hundred vinyl albums with no metadata added at all, and even when I had my first streamer (ND5XS) it played very happily based purely on my file storage strructure so I was still unaware of metadata, or more particularly the fact that my several hundred CDs had inconsistent metadata, likewise the first downloads I did - it was only when I changed to Audirvana that I discovered the metadata issue. And with 100s of albums affected life is too short to spend sorting it out, and several tools I tried supposedly ably to automate the process failed. A winner for me will be a renderer as good sounding as Audirvana but working perfectly with file structure alone, which is so simple and logical to add to and manage.
Hello, new to this , could you explain? " Roon" is separate piece of kit ? . I have Niam Superuniti and it only has active Tidal which sounds flat on -,Niam app. Would it connect to my amp/ streamer ,
Roon is a separate piece of music server software, that runs on either a pc , Nas or dedicated music server device. It does not use UPnP so you cant use it direct with the SuperUniti without another piece of hardware to either bridge Roon to UPnP or feed a spdif signal into the SuperUniti so essentially using another streamer. In some cases you can have the Roon server and bridge on the same device such as a SonicTransporter or Audiostore Prestige.
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