Measures 1.3.0 Beta 1 (Last test hopefully.

[hkphantomgtr]

In the ecosystem of Roon, using endpoint is popular and the most popular endpoint is a Raspberry Pi installed with a dedicated 3rd party OS called Ropieee.  It provides endpoint services to various popular streaming brands, besides Roon.  The function of an endpoint is bridging the music server pc to the DAC, meanwhile buffering a pool of the music data in memory before sending out to DAC, to minimise the jitter/latency.  Obviously that's more complicated than "Simple is the Best": connecting the DAC directly to the music server pc.  Back to the topic, simply just out of curiosity, I'd like to see if such a Raspberry Pi endpoint really can make a difference.

Being a beneficiary of SO, I really wish to know the sonic performance between running a Roon Bridge (endpoint software from Roon and exclusively for Roon) in SO, and Ropieee.

Coincidentally SO 1.3.0 B1 is out, I've compared the sonic performance (focus, dynamic, timbre, texture, sound stage, punch, and etc.) of "SO + Roon Bridge" in different OSs.  Since I can't get Ubuntu 22.04 server to run in neither lowlatency kernel nor the RT kernel successfully, I tried to find out how to compile a RT kernel.  During googling, I found there is a Ubuntu 22.04 Server version already got RT kernel inside, viz. ROS.

So, here is the result of the comparison of running "SO + Roon Bridge" in different OSs, from my system.  All OSs are fully updated and some unnecessary software removed, esp services, then installed with SO and lastly Roon Bridge.

ROS (RT kernel) > original Ubuntu 22.04 Server (original kernel) > Ropieee (low latency, not RT kernel) >>> original Raspberry OS (original bookworm kernel) 

I'd like to point out that, during my comparison, the sound from Raspberry OS is exceptionally below my expectation and other OSs performance.  It's so dull, flat, and muddy.  And sound stage and focus sit so low.  That really took me by surprise.

I'm not sure will the result be the same while using SO as a player, e.g. MPD.

Last but not least, the latency of ROS is also better than the other OSs, too.



image upload

Just my 2 cents.