Antipodes Player/Server combinations

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Christiaan has some great ears and he’s also great at articulating what he hears. I’ve thought he has described the Antipodes magic about as well as it can be described. So I have zero doubt he hears it as he described in the above. So Roon very likely has the redeeming qualities he describes. What I’d love to understand is why the negative qualities that keep Roon from being considered among the best sounding by so many others with excellent systems. Has he implemented his system in such a way that the problem doesn’t show up? Or is he just not bothered by it?

What I find most fascinating is his remark about the Oladra’s “special qualities”. To me what makes Antipodes servers special is the positives he associated with Squeeze

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Thank you Mark. Their were a few settings that differed so I will enjoy listening out for any new nuances. I just need to find that button that turns my S boxes into an Oladra+1.

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Thanks Paul for reminding us of those comments. All I can say is that I profoundly disagree with his assessment of Roon. I have tried to like it but even leaving my Oladra using Roon for a couple of weeks to see if I get used to it fails when I switch back to Squeeze + Squeeze and immediately rejoice in the simply better sound. Roon to my ears smears the sounds together and everything has less articulation and note character. Gaps between notes are not as clear, instruments lose their texture. I have also had a Grimm LM1 here playing Roon side by side with my Oladra and to my ears the LM1 with its Roon exhibits exactly the same failings as Roon on any other device. The LM1 is feted as being the first device to make Roon sound good and whilst it is not bad it is nowhere near as good as an Antipodes playing Squeeze + Squeeze.

I wonder what music Christiaan Punter listens to for him to make the comments he does about preferring Roon on the Oladra?

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I don’t have an Oladra (still looking for that magic Oladra+1 button in Squeeze though), but even with my S series, as much as I tired to like Roon, and hovered over the lifetime button 1 hour before a major price rise, I couldn’t do it. I really did prefer the interface and feared missing out. However, the additional open tabs with the AllMusic page plus the Qobuz app have been a good enough work-around for me when I fancied some info/research and Squeeze + Squeeze just sounded better to my ears…and it is sounding particularly good right now after a few adjustments as discussed above. All ears/systems/rooms are different though, so enjoy.

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Maybe Christian need to check his Squeeze settings as well :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Reply deleted, as it was written in a blond moment (despite the fact of having no hair - but I used to be blond).

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Well, having settled on Sq/Sq, it’s now stopped working :confused:

I usually leave my K30 on all the time but there was power cut last night and now I can’t access either the K30 dashboard or Squeeze. Roon server is working but has no player associated with it so its all a bit quiet at the moment.

I’ve tried rebooting several times, the Dashboard does appear initially but when I try to open Squeeze it hangs and then the dashboard disappears.

Anyone aware of a quick fix?

EDIT: After numerous reboots and cycling through other combinations , trying squeeze again finally worked😮‍💨

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Hi Nick,

I hold Christiaan’s opinion and writing style in high esteem. All these perspectives and insights can greatly contribute to making informed decisions. In regard to Christiaan’s evaluation of Roon 2.0, it seems accurate that Roon has improved recently, as affirmed by various users (not all likely), and he always will highlight the excellent user interface of Roon.

To my understanding Christiaan leans towards a sonic preference for the smoothest, richest, and most spacious sound, as opposed to a more neutral, spicier, tighter, leaner, albeit slightly more expressive and agile one. I think while most of us will acknowledge that achieving both qualities simultaneously might be challenging, Christiaan notes that some of Oladra’s special qualities seemed diminished with Squeeze, maybe without entirely dismissing either option (to me he seems less extreme than you or your ears, no offence intended).

In his reviews, while striving for objectivity in describing a device’s inherent qualities, Christiaan seems to “unhear” certain elements, such as cables, outputs (USB vs. reclocked), and player and server apps, to maintain an unbiased perspective. Perhaps, to align with his commitment to objective writing, he gives less weight to these factors in the equation. Consequently, his opinions appear to oscillate between the bare versions of sound quality and the modified versions, whether achieved through Squeeze or Roon, and the choice of cables, such as USB vs. AES. Upon reflection, it does strike me as a bit peculiar to see him involved in Taiko, given that it has evolved significantly to encompass a lot of auxiliary equipment lately.

It’s worth noting that, to the best of my knowledge, Christiaan doesn’t use i2s, consistently employs the same homemade AC cables, and doesn’t disclose the tracks used for evaluation and he invites his neighbors every now and then to evaluate setups (or to avoid complaints ;-).

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It has seemed to me that Christiaan has a great set of ears. How he describes the strengths of Antipodes has been spot on. I therefore trust that he’s hearing the positives from Roon he claims to hear.

What I don’t get is why he doesn’t hear the negatives that so many report. It’s rare to see audiophiles mentioning Roon as the best-sounding option when other options are provided. Typically, they mention it doing something that gets in the way of their enjoyment of the music. So, either Christiaan has configured his system in a way that gets that problem to vanish or he’s insensitive to the issue(s) or those issues are somehow contributing to him favoring it.

Ok that helps explain it. As an aside, I recently got to hear what HQPlayer can do with DSD512 and its best modulator. I’ve never had a server powerful enough to scale to this level on the fly so it was a mystery to me. But a friend was able to use HQPlayer Pro offline scale it offline. To my utter shock, it was impossible for me to listen to this track because it actually made me queasy. The transient attack had been so overly smoothed out, it almost seemed like a viscous liquid had been poured over the track. This same track upscaled in PGGB had punch and kick - it was the kind of punch you feel in your got. This had been totally smoothed off to create more of a smooth and lush sound with the DSD512 version.

Maybe not just challenging but impossible if what’s required for some to have the smoothness they prefer is to smooth out the leading edge of transients. Maybe it turned out that what I consider Squeeze’s strengths are what actually pushed Christiaan into preferring Roon. Please don’t take this as me denigrating Christiaan and anyone who prefers that sonic signature. I just mention this as it fascinates me that there could be such a huge variance in musical preferences. I know we each hear things differently, but I am now seeing that it’s more of the case that some hear things very differently. I need to keep that in mind going forward when recommending Squeeze.

One positive I should mention is that I used Roon to compare that DSD512 track to a that same track from PGGG. There was also another version of that same track that came from HQPlayer Pro but it was upscaled to PCM. Roon was the only player that could play DSD512, so that’s why I used it. The differences between these tracks couldn’t have been easier to hear. PGGB easily beat both other versions to my ears, but I’ll have to invite some folks over to hear the comparisons to see their reactions.

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As a headphone listener I find roon superior to squeeze. I find squeeze has a homogeneous sound with slightly recessed mids. So for my pggb files it is roon/hqplayer on the k30 direct stream to naa on EX and usb to my dac. TT2. It appears most squeeze users are speaker users.

On another note I read @antipodes had said he prefers non upsampled redbook. I’ve been giving that some listening time.

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Thank you for sharing. It’s crucial to compare headphones and speakers.

Do you recall where you came across this information above? Currently, even though I would better refrain from introducing file types to my Squeeze/Roon evaluation, its significance is also undeniable.

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I am unable to locate the article at present but I will continue the search. I believe it was an article in which he was describing his design philosophy and probably from the CX/EX era.

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Thank you for that @Progisus.
I recently came across Mark Jenkins’ (@antipodes) insightful quotes on Christaan Punters’ hifi-advice website, particularly regarding Ethernet- vs. USB connections and the CX-EX and K50. But I couldn’t find his stance on Redbook. It would be interesting to learn his current perspective on Roon vs. Squeeze as well. :blush:

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I found this:

See footnote 5. It doesn’t specifically reference redbook .

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Thanks.

"I should add that I am not a big fan of high-bitrate recordings or DSD. If you have harsh digital sound, then using higher bit rates and/or DSD will reduce that problem. But the trade-off is that you will lose midrange and upper bass presence. This is just a personal view, and nothing to do with any design choices we have made. Bigger bitrate numbers do not mean 'better.’

Bonus:

« It takes a K50 about 2 months to burn in properly," he told me. "It sounds too thin and sharp for the first 200 hours. If you turn it off for any length of time, it will take about 3 days to get back to optimum performance »

“You really don’t want to use USB,” he said.

Note that observations are from July ´21 and for example the latter has been adjusted since, if my memory serves me well.

May ´23 - Christiaan @ hifi-advice (Oladra):
(…) Via USB, the server sounds markedly tighter and leaner and becomes a little bit more expressive and direct as well as rather less spacious and organic. The Vermouth Reference USB provided a pleasant alternative that worked more synergistically with the Oladra, providing more flow and air.

There’s no question that the USB output sounds technically superb but I feel there’s a mechanical side to the reproduction, the music having traded an amount of liquidity and flow for enhanced immediacy.
(…)
Breaking it down into single words, one could say the USB performance is more analytical and AES/EBU more emotional.(…)

When considering Christaan’s preferences, a comparison between Roon and Squeeze suggests that he might lean towards Oladras’ AES/EBU, a choice that Mark Jenkins might also favor. In fact, opting for Squeeze over AES/EBU could strike the ideal balance, just as Roon over USB might. Alternatively, a direct Ethernet connection to the DAC is another viable option, especially given Antipodes’ apparent affinity for Ethernet, as I understand it.

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Yes… preferences change often in this hobby and all are quite subjective. My mood is the biggest. Enjoy the ride and Prog On!

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Thanks for digging this up. I think the downside he mentioned can be true if the native rate was poorly scaled to a higher bit rate or DSD. It’s less of an issue or maybe not an issue at all if the native format was actually high bit rate PCM or DSD to begin with. The flip side is that redbook can sound worse if it is simply the product of down sampling from higher rates. How DACs handle things is important to consider as there is simply no getting around upscaling with delta sigma DACs.

Recording provenance can be far more important in my experience. Especially when the original recording was analog.

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Some of my favourite listening is live from the BBC radio 3 broadcasts or from their archive of broadcast music. That completely circumvents any issue of recording provenance.

A few days ago there was a superb live performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro on the BBC Radio 3. Unfortunately Roon has no known way of accessing the BBC Sounds app whereas Squeeze + Squeeze happily integrates the BBC live broadcasts via the BBC Sounds App.

Unfortunately I simply haven’t heard any redeeming aspects of Roon sound compared to Squeeze + Squeeze.

I do wonder if the headphone vs speakers aspect plays a big part in this. What you describe is the exact opposite of what I hear and how you describe Squeeze is more like how I hear Roon. I suppose if I had to use one word to describe Roon it would be ‘muddy’.

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I’ve yet to actually hear Squeeze through my headphones (Aeon Noire). It’s actually been a while since I’ve heard Roon play to them, as they get lugged to work with me. I am off from work next week so I should break them out at home.

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Hi Paul,
CP’s work for Taiko might explain to a certain extent also his position to Roon.
The Taiko Extreme has a very strong Roon user base. There are quite a few users who are looking forward to Taiko’s own software but there are a lot who will stick to Roon. Now there is a certain SQ delta between Taiko’s software and Roon and so CP will nothing do to denigrate Roon.
A second point might be that CP didn’t so far formally review any Antipodes G4 devices.

Matt