XXHighEnd

As some of you might know, I tend to use Roon/HQPlayer alongside XXHighEnd from time to time. It provides a different user experience, and my wife and boys enjoy listening to their playlists on my main system.

I was streaming some contemporary jazz through Roon/HQPlayer and liked its particularly lively sound. I prepare the stream with XX and took a listen (still with Roon/HQPlayer) to the prepared stream, which now sat on my local music server. Wow, what a difference in sound!

I'm not suggesting that one playback method necessarily sounds better than the other, only that they sound quite different. Streaming gives a much more lively and dynamic sound (a bit like low SFS), whereas playing the files locally gives a more harmonically rich and mellow sound.

I suppose streaming vs. local playback using Roon/HQPlayer is analogous to playing around with playback settings in XX. Only, we can control the sound in the latter ;)

Mani.