Guys, I have an honest and straight question to you. Why are people so obsessed about Roon, audionirvana, Tidal etc. so much?
Let's discuss the evolution of video which may help answer your question. Broadcast color television became a thing in the US around the mid-1950's. It was grainy, very little contrast, low resolution. It was amazing and served the purpose of being able to see people, the objects they were holding, where they stood in the room, etc. Cable provided a bit better picture because the signal then became consistent. No longer were you dependent on geography to maintain the best picture the technology could deliver. Then DVD upped the resolution, was better at syncing film to the home standard, and that even provided an easy way to take the interlaced standard and convert it to progressive effectively doubling the resolution. Now even more detail emerged on the screen. You could actually start to read that notepad on the desk, you could identify logos throughout the room, even what type of pen the actor was using. The next technology was HD which upped the resolution even further. Now you're reading notepads on desks in the back of the room, you can identify that the actor has not shaved in 3 days, you can see fine detail in wardrobes, faults in make-up, etc. Now we have 4K TV and soon 8K and with it is HDR which brings a wider color gamut and better contrast. With this improvement you can see details in birds across a fence line all the way in the back of a field, identify individual parts of a flower below that fence line, watch the details on the wings of a butterfly as it lands on the flower, all while the sun sets across the entire scene. Now this 2D image is conveying a depth and realism and it truly becomes a "window". If you've ever calibrated a high-end television or monitor and hit that sweet "window" effect it truly does feel as if you are looking out of a window. Things within the image just pop into place. Things become 3d and you forget you're looking at a pre-recorded video. You've brought that scene into your environment and you're now experiencing it.
Audio can do the same thing. Of course our "window" is not something we're looking at but we're hearing. That's what some of us are chasing. With compressed audio there is plenty of information, or resolution, there to completely understand what is going on and follow the story but only at an early broadcast TV level. Not being able to read the notepad probably isn't influencing your like or dislike of the material. When I sit in my listening room though I want to read that notebook. This not only requires higher resolution source material so that the writing on the notebook is actually clear in the recording but that I've calibrated my system to resolve the additional detail. Speaking specifically about the music....
Reproducing that "window" I describe is also what I'm striving for in my listening environment. I want to hear the high-hat to the right of the toms. I want the singer in front of the drums. I want to hear how hard and quickly the guitarist is hitting the fret. How quickly fingers are moving across the fret board. The saxophonist taking a breath. A chair moving in an orchestra and which player moved. Pages turning in that same orchestra. That creates my window and I absolutely want to experience that. Certain recordings will manipulate phase to put sounds behind you or pan front to back. You, in your space, are now sitting within that recording. You're there with the artists. Window achieved.
So why the obsession? First, it starts with the requirement of a source which actually contains that additional detail. Compressed audio formats roll off this fine detail and/or eliminate it completely. Then you need a playback system which is able to resolve these fine details. This is where software like Roon, Audirvana, JRiver, and other high-resolution software comes in. This software is bypassing any processing within the OS which would modify the original recording. The goal is to get as pure a "signal" out of the system as possible. Additionally, timing becomes a big part of this. You'll often hear people talk about jitter. Jitter impacts the playback equipment from doing the right thing in the analog domain. Again, we're talking about things in the recording that are often very quick and are subtle. They don't change the narrative of the music you're listening to but it's easy to lose them and when when lost the placement of instruments and that window starts to collapse.
I will do a lot of music discovery across every source available to me but when I finally find something I like I take it up to my listening room. I will sit and focus just on that recording. Honestly, if the recording is terrible, no matter how much I like the music, it literally feels like nails on a chalkboard. There are certain recordings that are so bad it's literally like trying to watch broadcast TV when I'm too far from the tower. It's painful and a waste of time. That doesn't mean I won't go back to iMac and cheap headphones and watch at my desk. But, because there is so much well produced and engaging music I get that window effect with, that is generally where I spend my time. Am I prioritizing the recording quality over the music? Yes actually. But I've never had the hairs stand up on the back of my neck from watching YouTube. I like to be physically engaged with the music and that requires an uncompressed format, well recorded, produced, and mastered, an a very resolving system. That's the experience I prefer. Neither of us is wrong; listening and discovering music is the priority of the hobby. We may just be trying to listen and discover different things. I hope that helps explain the obsession.
