Good day @Jonathan_Gullman, I wish to establish please why the sign “- - k” keeps flashing on and off on the MSB Discrete DAC screen when the input remains on the Renderer and no music is being streamed or I stop streaming? I use Roon exclusively on the Renderer. Thanks.
Hello @DWMB
This is an issue I’ve been trying to fix. I thought I had it fixed with the last firmware but apparently I have not. I’ll keep working on it and see if I can’t get this fixed in the next update. I assume it’s just when the songs change?
Whenever there is no streaming or I stop streaming music, irrespective of whether it’s locally stored files from my NAS or Tidal. Many thanks Jonathan. I’m very pleased that you have picked up the issue and are working to fix it. 
Sometimes one feels so helpless and alone with this. So, very glad you are working on it. I look forward to the update.
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If there is no streaming or music playing, this is correct. “—k” means there is no music being played back. It means there is no sample rate. I used to show “0k” but on the Discrete display it looked like “Ok” (Okay) so everyone wanted to know what the okay was for.
Thanks. That is how I understood it. But it’s the repeated flashing of that sign on and off that ‘s the problem, when no streaming is taking place.
I have sent the dealer a video clip on WhatsApp, to share with you, which demonstrates what the problem is.
Hello Jonathan, been playing with Jplay and the latest V2 firmware with cascade for a bit, seems very steady! No more skipping. well done team.
A.
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Great to hear this!
I recently started playing with JPlay and decided to acquire the $200 lifetime subscription. The GUI is relatively easy to navigate with seamless Qobuz and Tidal integration. Accessing purchased music files took a bit more effort requiring an UPnP server to access music files directories on the computer, attached drives, or NAS devices. I chose to go with MinimServer buying the full license. After a bit of fiddling, JPLAY finally found and accessed stored music files.
JPLAY music playback is phenomenally good, to my ears, better than Roon. Roon gui is still the leader. But with recent performance issues and lags between songs in the queue and after thousands of hours with Roon, I decided to dabble with something different. JPLAY may be the new belle of the ball for me. But for now, it is my go to app for digital music streamed to my dac.
I share your observations on JPlay but am living with ROON server and Squeeze player as the best of both worlds.
Sure wish ROON would acknowledge their issues and provide improved SQ.
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I feel the need to stand up for Roon here. Roon does not have a sound quality problem. Just make sure you configure your system for lossless bit perfect operation. Roon even has a feature to check for this as shown in the attached picture. You can also use the MSB Bit Perfect test files as a second source to confirm what Roon is reporting.
If you have verified two different software solutions are delivering bit perfect files to your DAC and you still believe the sound quality is different in any way, then I respectfully suggest it is time for a reality check.
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Sorry to burst your bubble, Roons quality depends on the version which is beyond the users control with forced updates. Yes the software says all the right things, but saying and doing are different things. I suspect their programmers focus has become the mass market.
Then how is it every MSB software update, that requires bit perfect playback, that I have ever performed over many years using many different versions of Roon has always worked flawlessly? It is just not believable that they managed to screw up something so basic as doing nothing to the file.
It only requires bit perfect playback for a tiny portion of a second, and it has a header which is designed to interrupt any smart manipulation algorithms by presenting as data instead of sound. Also only 16bits of the 32bit word are required to be bit perfect. I designed the bit perfect checks at a time when software either did the right thing all the time, or did it wrong all the time, with complex modern software that is not always the case anymore.
I just queued up all 24 of MSB’s bit perfect test files in Roon and pressed play. I saw the success message of BIT displayed 24 times during 4 minutes and 21 seconds of gapless playback. I have to say that all the objective evidence I am seeing suggests Roon is doing this right and people are defaming them unjustly.
However, I have an open mind. Please elaborate Dustin on your experience that has lead you to these negative opinions about Roon’s bit perfect playback. All the cold hard facts would be appreciated. Thank you.
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I hear you, and I was in the exact same mindset when I started my previous thread exploring streamer/server options worthy of the MSB Cascade. For a long time, I subscribed to the “bits are bits” dogma—it didn’t seem logical or rational that a DAC receiving the same bit-perfect file would sound different based on the software platform.
I’d read reviews from users reporting sonic improvements when switching to brands like Pink Faun (who use their own Linux code for transport rather than RAAT) or Aurender(where users consistently prefer the Conductor OS over Roon). My initial reaction was an indictment of “total confirmation bias.”
The Roon Catalyst
My move away from Roon wasn’t initially about sound; it was about stability. After thousands of hours as a “big fan” and lifetime subscriber, I began experiencing abrupt stops mid-track and 60-second delays between songs. I assumed it was hardware. I never questioned software or the sound quality because, again, bits are bits. Maybe it’s a network issue, internet lag, streamer service. Certainly not Roon. My sacred purple cow.
The Reality Check
I decided to trial JPLAY, streaming only Qobuz and Tidal. To my frustration, I immediately and unquestionably heard an improvement in fidelity. As a “cold hard facts” person, this made zero sense to me, but the engagement factor was unmistakable.
While the JPLAY GUI isn’t at the Roon level of polish, it is very capable. More importantly, when using the MSB Cascade Renderer, the difference is unquestionable. Not subtle at all. When I first upgraded from the Reference to the Cascade using Roon, I felt the gap between digital and vinyl was nearly closed. With JPLAY, I’ll venture that digital has surpassed my vinyl setup and is now approaching the performance of my tape deck.
An Invitation to the Skeptics
If you are struggling with playback issues or simply curious about whether there is more frontier to explore with your MSB DAC, I invite you to try a trial of JPLAY, Audirvāna, or Squeeze. I have zero financial or emotional investment in any of the products mentioned here other than as a full msrp paying customer.
Whether it’s the protocol, the processing overhead, or something else entirely, the “bits” are only half the story. The presentation layer and transport layer must have an influence that escapes my ability to convey.
My posts in this thread were less about criticizing Roon but more about how I ended up meeting Jplay venturing beyond my beloved Roon app and my experience as a Jplay user.
To double click on the point, I know what I hear and Jplay is better than Roon in my system by a good margin. I am still considering adding a music streamer server such as the Pink Faun Ultra 2.16 or the Antipodes Oladra.
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It is a shame Roon became unstable for you and you were unable to trace it to a root cause. Did you open a support ticket with Roon? There are hundreds of thousands of people using Roon and it simply working is one of the big draws for the product. It was for me. It sounds like you are using a completely different set of hardware for JPlay than you were for Roon. It certainly could have been a hardware issue.
If the sound quality of JPlay is really as dramatically better than Roon was in your system, then your Roon configuration must have been totally screwed up somehow. Perhaps this is related to your stability issues. If your Roon system is still operational, verify you are getting bit perfect playback as I previously described. If you are not, then that would explain the difference in sound.
Regarding your advice for me to try some different software solutions. I used a few before adopting Roon. Audirvana was one of them. I made sure every solution was configured for bit perfect playback. Unsurprisingly, they all sounded identical. I chose Roon for functionality reasons. It was also more stable than some of the open source streaming solutions I used for a while.
I don’t doubt you hear a difference between Roon and JPlay in your system. I have a computer science and engineering background. I don’t have Dustin’s level of knowledge and experience in digital audio, but I have studied it and I have a reasonably deep understanding of how all this works. In my opinion, there are only two explanations for the difference you are hearing. Either one of the solutions is not bit perfect, or you have fooled yourself into hearing a difference. The later is a common trap we humans fall into. Dustin is suggesting Roon is not always bit perfect, even when it says it is. I have a hard time believing that, but it theoretically could explain the difference if true. It seems more likely to me that either your Roon configuration is bad or you are fooling yourself. Sorry to tell you this, but it is my honest educated opinion.
Share some more details of your Roon system if you want some help debugging it and you don’t want to ask Roon for help. I helped another guy in one of the Roon groups on Facebook resolve a similar problem some time ago. He did not have enough memory in his Roon core and the underlying Lynx system was paging a lot.
Enjoy the music, Dan
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I, also, have been using Roon since it came out, with a lifetime license. I find it easy to run a ROCK server on a fanless NUC (I keep switching between a local library, and a NAS folder), as building PCs has been a hobby since putting a hard drive and memory card into a PC XT. I find it easier referencing/maintaining the music library on the NAS, rather than the internal SSD on the ROCK server.
I have tried JPlay, and found it a bit buggy (or I am just accommodated to Roon). I did not get over that enough to actually try sound comparison.
Can you suggest a “good” server to use with JPlay? I’ll look to see if I still have MinimServer running on my NAS. But open to suggestions. I used it (JPlay iOS app) too long last time, and ended up buying it. Is there a PC app for it? I frequently use my PC for music selection, then move to the chair, and use iPad after that.
I don’t see why I could not have both setup, and use as desired.
I did not enjoy sideloading the Audirvana app onto the QNAP server, and think that Audirvana is best run from a dedicated computer/laptop. I know that the guys here are working to become certified by Audirvana, perhaps that is complete. Perhaps they will create a dedicated udirvana server (like ROCK).
I, so far, have not been able to tell much sound quality difference between these music playback systems through the MSB renderer v2, but enjoy the experimentation of the hobby.
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@Mairet , many MSB owners use Roon. We in fact used it as a reference in our Sound room for years. The frustration we had was with forced software updates that could and often did change the sound performance. For a company that needs a stable and unchanging reference source, this became unmanageable.
We are not here to attack Roon in any way. Our goal is to make every source sound its best. This is perhaps a difference in goals and we are getting caught up in the 1%’ing nature of the audio industry. With all modern software, it changes constantly and requires us to keep evaluating and comparing. We haven’t done critical evaluations of Roon for a long time now and won’t speak to its current performance.
I am curious when you tried it? It was a bit buggy at first but I have heard it has become more stable? Again… software always changing.