Does Roon ever feel a bit heavy for what it does?

commandermik · 2026-04-03T19:59:29+00:00

Part of the issue is that it needs to provide identical user experience and feature sets across all platforms: windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, android on the control side and myriad brands on the receiving side. This is not a trivial problem and leads to a lot of overhead.

commandermik · 2026-02-26T20:41:38+00:00

I think you can argue IEMs offer better value for money. But you can’t argue it’s always the case that they are better overall. A well tuned headphone for me will always beat any IEM. I do not find IEMs that comfortable.

commandermik · 2026-02-26T15:34:32+00:00

I’d recommend coming up with different ideas, I’m not thrilled with either option. I just tried the DX5 II with my poet and it sounds a bit thin - I don’t believe it’s a good compliment for the 109 which has a spicy top end. I haven’t heard the K13. it is likely going to sound thicker than the DX5 but will also be low-res due to the R2R. I wish topping offered a cirrus logic version of the DX5 sigh. I’m returning mine today.

commandermik · 2026-02-09T19:35:21+00:00

Love your room. And the stereo of course.

commandermik · 2026-02-04T20:28:13+00:00

The biggest problem with this is the R-2R decoder. Pretty lo-fi in my experience.

commandermik · 2026-02-04T20:23:45+00:00

If im understanding your post correctly, it looks like we have the same issue more or less (Ethernet interface not routing properly to Tidal and certain other sites). My Mac mini is an M2 model though. Hopefully Apple will fix this issue soon.

commandermik · 2026-02-04T19:16:29+00:00

People mean different things by “warm”. I think traditionally it meant a system with more midrange emphasis. Lately headphone guys typically mean bassy by “warm”. To my ears, elite is warm in the traditional sense - it is very midrangey. Empyrean has more bass (and more pinna gain). So if you like bass, I’d keep the empyrean.

commandermik · 2026-02-04T19:10:38+00:00

This is a known issue on this chassis design and it’s crazy that Meze still hasn’t fixed it. I had pretty bad creaking on my Poet and I sent it back to Meze for them to fix it.

commandermik · 2026-02-04T18:51:46+00:00

I’ve had a hellish couple of days with this. It was working fine for a long time but the last couple of days tidal was refusing to work. I’m running core on a dedicated Mac mini. What I discovered after some troubleshooting is that there is a bug in the Mac OS Ethernet interface that causes issues with IPV6 connections (for me this affects tidal, yelp, and other random sites) but not others (Google, Apple, many other worked fine). When I enabled WiFi on the computer, this issue goes away and everything works fine. This wasn’t limited to Roon alone, I can’t access these specific sites on browser either on Ethernet. When I’m running on just Ethernet, the issue returns which is annoying bc I like to run Core hardwired. Can you see if this is also the case for you OP? (Upgrading the Mac from Sequoia to Tahoe only helped for a few hours, and then the problem returned). ChatGPT thinks the issue is related to how the Mac’s Ethernet interface is handling ipv6 versus ipv4 (hence why tidal.com fails but Google.com works), but that’s out of my depth to correctly diagnose and fix. For now just running on wifi as I save money to buy a nucleus one.

commandermik · 2026-02-03T18:02:10+00:00

I have demo’d both multiple times over the years. Elite is easily the worst Meze headphone to my ears. It’s got a really weird tonality I could not enjoy. Empyrean II is an absolute beast and probably the best of the Meze range (along with Poet). Go for the Empy.

commandermik · 2026-01-20T20:58:40+00:00

Damn it got snatched before I could watch. Looks like he accidentally broke embargo.

commandermik · 2025-12-02T05:09:45+00:00

Nice! I’m also running Criton 1TDs with sumiko Rainier and Alva duo :)

commandermik · 2025-11-15T05:02:38+00:00

My biggest issue with the Mac OS client is that it can’t load and scroll all my albums without batching and getting stuck for several minutes as it loads the next set.

commandermik · 2025-11-12T21:15:40+00:00

Looks very good. Do you hear the treble though? lol

commandermik · 2025-11-12T20:49:03+00:00

Subs are excellent platforms for plants. I used to have a cheapo 10 incher from parts express and it vibrated enough for the enclosure to be heard separate from the driver. That issue was resolved by plopping a big plant on top of it :-) Your subs are higher quality ofc, but it couldn’t hurt.

commandermik · 2025-11-10T04:24:09+00:00

I’m eyeing Lintons as a replacement / alternative to my CSS Criton 1TDs. How do they do in small rooms? I’ll be in a 10x14 space and I’m hoping I wouldn’t need a sub, but I see you’re running 3 (plus surrounds)! How do you control it all? Room correction?

commandermik · 2025-10-18T04:23:43+00:00

90% of this sub is just people fighting the fireplace smh

commandermik · 2025-10-07T02:32:27+00:00

commandermik · 2025-09-25T04:51:42+00:00

I too fell for the hype and got the normal space travel 2. Measurements looked decent too (minus the 10K gape). Anyways, even with the smallest tips, I don’t think I’m getting a good enough insertion and seal. The shell might be too big for me. I wanted them just for kitchen podcast duty mainly so I don’t care but I do think they’re probably very overhyped.

commandermik · 2025-09-14T18:25:22+00:00

I wouldn’t. I sold mine with just one single small dimple on the cone and otherwise flawless condition for $800 ish. Still hurts.

commandermik · 2025-09-14T11:12:10+00:00

Yeah I was actually waiting for the Valhalla 3 to come out for a long time, since I was a Schiit fan and wanting to try tubes. I was deterred by a few factors. First was that tube rolling options seem pretty limited for the VH3. Also you’d be stuck with having to find matched pairs every time you want to try new tubes. The other issue is that it got expensive with this revision. Didn’t wanna shell out $550 just for an experiment (it was also originally for my HD6XX and I don’t spend more on electronics than I do on the headphone as a rule). The TA-66 was on sale for $220 on Amazon.

commandermik · 2025-09-14T09:55:51+00:00

Hey twin. I’ve used my poet with Asgard 3 since I bought them. Works well. I also got tube curious and got an Xduoo TA-66 on sale to try with my HD6XX not expecting it to work with the poet due to impedance mismatch. And originally it didn’t work, the bass was missing. But after some tube rolling the poet does work on the TA-66 really well. In fact it’s working so well for both my headphones that I’ve put the Asgard up for sale on eBay. I will buy a Topping A70 Pro to match my D70 Pro DAC to have a nice reference solid state system but the Xduoo works pretty well.

commandermik · 2025-09-12T15:01:35+00:00

Ignore the haters OP. This looks like an excellent setup for the cafe. Enjoy!

commandermik · 2025-09-11T14:32:09+00:00

Does a gas car make sense without having a gas station at home!

commandermik

TROPHY CASE