Investigation

Sidebar: Ready For Roon?
There's a lot of talk about Roon right now, and it's not hard to see why. As a means of cataloguing and playing music, it's extremely attractive. Spun off by Meridian some time back (originally part of the Sooloos project), it combines library and playback software, as well as adding in extra information and images about the music being accessed.

Run on a computer, on your network server, a device such as Roon's own Nucleus or Nucleus+ [HFN May '18], or even a little Intel NUC, the Roon Core works by creating its own database of your music. It can then integrate this with Internet radio, or your Qobuz and/or Tidal subscription, to create a seamless listening experience. You can control it from a PC or the Roon app, and play music to multiple Roon-ready devices, from computers through to network players and the like, either separately or grouped into 'zones' for multiroom audio. Roon handles unlimited remote devices.

It also offers upsampling or downsampling to suit the playing device, so for example you can play DSD files to non-DSD DACs, and there's also built-in MQA decoding for those Tidal Masters files, along with DSP functions for room correction and more.

Roon is a paid-for service, at US$119 a year, or US$499 for a lifetime membership, reflecting the cost of the extra data the system brings to your listening. You can find out more, and try it free for two weeks, at www.roonlabs.com.