Hi everyone,
Whilst I usually prefer for our own users to chime in to avoid vendor bias, I've read all kinds of misinformation online that warrants defining our view on the subject. We, and our customers, have used Roon extensively on all our servers (as even the ZENmini can run Roon Core) and we have yet to find the CPU lacking except for DSD upsampling, which is by far the most CPU intensive operation. The concern for larger collections seems largely unfounded for us - we have customers and dealers with over 12TB of music on a NAS running a ZENith as Roon Core and Player and still enjoying a fast user experience. If you use the internal storage, that will be up to 4TB, then the server should cope very well. As for the reasons to use a lower-powered CPU, please read this
thread where I provide our reasons to do it. Also note that the new MK3 range have now upgraded CPUs (still low-powered) which have enough power in our tests to upsample to DSD256 in Roon without issues.
Which comes to the point of the "server + separate player plays better than a single-box server". Well, if you have a very noisy server that pollutes your USB output immensely, it is certainly true that adding an optimised streamer will help. However, the server is never totally isolated from influencing the streamer itself as they need to be connected, either via a switch or via an ethernet bridge on the server itself. Both cases need to be properly treated with good power supplies, good cables and even good clocking in order to prevent most noise from reaching the streamer. At this stage, you're ending up with an expensive spaghetti of boxes and cables. Even so, there's also the matter of the noise itself produced by the ethernet interfaces when receiving a continuous stream of data vs caching up the track from the SSD (in the case of our internal player, that is loaded into RAM). Also consider the effect that switching power supplies on a switch or server are having on the remaining components of your Hi-Fi. With the ZENith, we have noted time and again that we get better sound quality when using it as Roon Core and connecting the DAC directly to the server rather than using a separate server and using the ZENith only as a bridge when connecting it to an i5-based PC running Roon Core and a normal switch.
So the answer to the question of "does a server+streamer sound better than a one-box" is the same as the "is Ethernet better than USB". The answer is: it depends on how they are implemented.
The appealing factor about using a ZENith with Roon it's because it's a one-box solution that sounds amazing, particularly for its price. We do believe that for a server + streamer architecture to sound better, you'll have to spend considerably more money to get it and will still end up with spaghetti. But, in the end, this is just another vendor talking. What matters is your experience. So, if you can, go and have a listen and compare for yourself. Just trust your ears. The differences should be evident.
Nuno
Click to expand...