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Well, I am in the process of getting MPD/upmpdcli working on my renderer, got MinimServer up and running this afternoon on the NAS. I can connect to both the renderer and Media Server with BubbleUpmp, but no sound yet. Need to check my ALSA setup (I had set it up correctly, or so I thought). Either that or Roon is sitting on the device exclusively, even after disabling the endpoint in Roon.

David

I like Audirvana. The sound is dense and harmonically rich, and it plays literally any file I throw in it--ogg, mp4, SACD iso rips (it will convert 5.1 to 2 channel automatically)--anything! I've even grabbed a video mp4 file from YouTube and it will play the audio.

I use JRiver as a catalog to search my collection, since it will recognize just about any search term regardless of how bad the tagging is. So if I have a nice LP rip from some collector with crappy tags I can just name the folder in a way that I'll recognize and it turns up. I also use JRiver for remote listening around the house, and I even have it set up to be accessible when I'm on the road, so my whole collection is "at my fingertips" in the car. It's very handy for that.

Well, my listening trials last night was interesting. I would say up front that it was not optimum for either platform, since:
1. The Roon media files were on a local harddrive installed on the Roon Core, whereas media files served by Minimserver is resident on the NAS.
2. The flac files were compressed on both, Roon Core decompresses before sending to the renderer, whereas with upmpdcli + mpd it is sent compressed to the renderer to do the decompression (note to self, need to batch convert all flacs to zero compression flac).
3. Part of the way thru the listening session (and for the past couple of days) I have been concerned about a hardness to the sound of Roon that was not there before (i.e. when I was pulling files from the NAS). Roon Core had been processing files for volume leveling, crossfeed, and other setting that I do not really use. Once I turned this off, the sound improved significantly.

Impression of Minimserver->upmpdcli->mpd setup:
Smooth, relaxed quality to the sound, very appealing, however it seemed to be less controlled on the bottom and rolled off on top, i.e. a bit covered. Mushing of instruments (i.e. not as locationally distinct). However it is not fatiguing and can see why it is attractive, a more analog sound.

Impression of Roon (after turning off the processing)
More detailed, more expansive soundstage in all directions, better micro and macro dynamics, more sense of openness. More distinct instrument locations, better depth of soundstage. However there is a slight graininess or hardness that persists and was not there before I changed to an internal harddrive as the media library source.

I am going to give it a bit more time, but I am inclined to revert back to pulling media data off the NAS for Roon, I believe it sounds better. I can then decompress all the flac files and run both Roon and Minimserver off a common library rather than maintaining 2 libraries, which makes it easier.

Anyway, once I get that done, I think another comparison would be in order, but right now, there definitely seems to be a difference in the sound between the two, as non-optimum as the setups both are.

David

Dave, I believe you are confirming something Charlie told us by email when he copied his music on a drive from his NAS and put it in his Superserver. He said the NAS was head and shoulders above the internal drive.

I was using Minimserver/BubbleUpnp up until the latest upgrade when I lost 5 years of playlists. Minimserver blamed it on Bubble and the Bubble developers laughed and said it was the upgrade to Minimserver. Switched to Roon. Has to be one program serving and controlling with backup.

Jim,

You cannot make any judgements about Nas vs local files from David’s tests as streamers and render eras are different.

To do Nas vs local, this is the test I would suggest.

NAS—>Minimserver—>upmpdcli—>mpd
local files —> mpd

In both cases, the same MPD needs to be renderer, as there are sonic differences between mpd versions.

BTW, tried to setup minimserver yesterday. It is not recognizing DSD files. Is that normal?

Jim,

Yes, Charlie told me that when he was over a couple weekends back. Of course, I had to find out for myself (stubborn me ). The 2 TB SSD I bought for the fanless Roon Core can be recycled to another of my many computers in my house.

Just bought a couple new drives with enough capacity to upgrade my WD NAS to serve as a backup to my Synology NAS (which has a MUCH better processor and lots of memory to run server processes like MinimServer. I found the WD NAS was useless for anything other fileserving and backup, so putting it to the use it is best for. Both NAS are configured as RAID 1, so having 4 copies of the music data is some insurance (still have to make that offsite copy).

So an interesting experiment, nevertheless.

David

But I can, comparing Roon off a local drive vs Roon off the NAS. I detected a difference in the sound I was hearing before. And I can say that Roon seemed to me to sound better pulled from the NAS than off an internal harddrive. Now, the interesting thing I would like to find out more about, is what is the computer overhead in handling data over the network interface vs pulling data off a SATA drive, even an SSD. Given that it is a slower with more latency (since I have spinning HDs in the NAS), it is not a latency or data speed issue but must related to the processes the computer needs to perform to read data off a disk. Need a computer architecture (and maybe OS expert) to explain what may be going on with either.

I really do not want to even try attaching a drive to the lightweight Atom-based board I am using for my renderer. Charlie was saying that with a Xeon-based SuperServer, a far more powerful computer, the sound was not as good off a local drive versus pulling data from the NAS says to me there is an issue with related to disc access. What IS curious is that all Roon Core is doing is handling data and not rendering, and there still seems to be an issue, at least to my ears.

David

I think it only does DSF.

I had the same experience. Sounds better from the NAS than from a system drive or auxiliary drive.

Shashi, it appears Dave and Charlie were both using Roon to serve music to their renderers from either a NAS or a local drive on the renderer. Our experience has been the renderer should do as little processing as possible including not unfolding FLAC files as Dave mentioned. We had compared this several years ago with our little Atom based servers using Minimserver/BubbleUpnp. Charlie, and apparently Dave wanted to see if their newer more powerful servers would handle the task better, but apparently it's still preferable to serve from the NAS.

Minimserver can be problematic with DSD files. Maybe just DSF. You aldo have to be a tag Nazi for it to work well or you're going to lose things. It was great when we first started, but Roon is superior in every way for my use. I'm never going back.