Roon Core
 

Transferred my Roon Core to my MacBook Pro from the Windows 10 PC. Much better sound.

I have already noticed that difference even before Roon. MacBook Pro consistently better sound whether it was USB or Optical out through my Schiit Gungnir Multibit. When I installed Roon it was to my PC. Now that I transferred Roon Core to MacBook the difference is still not insignificant. Doesn't seem to matter if I use my MacBook Roon>Wifi>Oppo>coax digital>DAC or MacBook>optical>DAC, it is still better than Windows PC all around..

Why? Looking for a logical explanation but can not seem to find one.

Have you tried running Bootcamp and putting Windows on the MacBook Pro?

Not recently. Tried it before and found no practical use for it since I have 2 computers. Not sure it is worth loading bootcamp just to experiment for this purpose. I guess I'll just leave it as one of those "unexplainable" things and enjoy the music. :music:

I think the explanation may be that my aging windows pc is using a slower spinning hard drive vs the SSD hard drive on my MacBook... :scratch2: Roon Core should be run on SSD.

Doggie,
I'm note sure I understand the point of doing that if Serge has Roon running on his MacBook Pro?:scratch2:

Serge, is your Mac is hardwired via Ethernet to your network router? Maybe it is the quality of the Mac's Ethernet port/interface? :scratch2:

Nope both in the same room over wifi. Both are over 100mbps so not a problem. I'm just curious why I consistently prefer the sound of the MacBook no matter what. I'll just let it go and keep listening to the MacBook. :D

That removes the hardware from the equation. And then the variable is just the OS.

Bootcamp is reversible without the need to reformat the MAC partition. You can resize the Mac partition with Disk Utility and create a Bootcamp partition and then install Windows. If you don’t want the windows partition anymore just delete the windows partition. And resize the Mac partition back to the full drive.

I figured it out. One of my USB ports was flaky. Of course that was the one I was using! :smoking: Everything makes sense now. PC and Mac are now equal!

After tracking my CPU utilization and getting it down into below 10% everything is smooth and peachy. The background apps were killing my CPU