Jump to content

Roon Discussion Thread


Recommended Posts

7 minutes ago, Peter the Greek said:

So if I have this right, I could run the Roon server on a PC and then have an "endpoint" hooked up to the hifi which would stream the music to it?

 

Yep.

 

7 minutes ago, Peter the Greek said:

Where can I find a list of endpoint hardware?

 

A good start:

 

https://roonlabs.com/partners.html

 

7 minutes ago, Peter the Greek said:

A quick google search suggests a chromecast with an optical out cable?

Chromecast Audio is fine for 44.1/48kHz. There's issues with 88.2/96kHz though and since the product is discontinued, may never get fixed:

 

https://support.google.com/chromecast/thread/356030?hl=en

 

7 minutes ago, Peter the Greek said:

The PC doesn't have wifi - presumably that wont stop me from using an ipad to run Roon via an endpoint? 

Yep, as per discussion above, best to have your PC (which will be your Roon Core/Roon Server) hard-wired to the router, rather than wireless. Endpoints around the house can be wireless if you need.

 

iPad is a great Roon Remote, for controlling playback to all your endpoints.

 

Let us know what your budget is for endpoint/s and type of connection you want (digital coax/optical/USB) and we can list some options here. There are really good affordable options and there are really good expensive options, so a budget can help narrow the list.

 

Cheers

 

 

Edited by Music2496
Link to comment
Share on other sites



Guest Peter the Greek
5 minutes ago, Music2496 said:

Let us know what your budget is for endpoint/s and type of connection you want (digital coax/optical/USB) and we can list some options here.

 

Superb, thanks!

 

Just need optical or coax I suppose. Is $100 out of the question?

 

I'm liking the idea of this. The PC stays on nearly 24/7 and is plenty powerful enough and is hard wired to the router.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Peter the Greek said:

Just need optical or coax I suppose. Is $100 out of the question?

If you're happy with 44.1/48kHz, the Chromecast Audio is perfect and under your budget. 

 

For a bit more:

 

The HiFiBerry Digi+ Pro is great but you'll need to put it together (not hard) and load it's operating to SD card.

 

https://www.pakronics.com.au/products/hifiberry-digi-pro

 

https://www.pakronics.com.au/collections/raspberry-pi-australia/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus-released-in-march-2018

 

https://www.pakronics.com.au/products/steel-case-for-hifiberry-digi-black

 

https://www.pakronics.com.au/collections/raspberry-pi-australia/products/raspberry-pi-5v-2-5a-power-supply-for-the-super-power

 

Plus an 8gb/16gb SD card.

 

If you want something already built, this is a great option with digital coax output. It ships from India but you'll find a lot of people around the world using it and quite happy with it. I've had one for a year now without any issue.

 

https://www.allo.com/sparky/digione-player.html

Edited by Music2496
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Peter the Greek there's a Bluesound Node 2 up for sale on SNA at the moment.

 

This has both optical and digital coax output and is 'Roon Ready'. Connect it to the network and your Roon Core/Server will see it over the network.


That's a bit more in price than the options I suggested above but there's no DIY element to the Bluesound gear.

Edited by Music2496
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Bunno77 said:

I had a lot of drop-outs too when using WiFi.

This wasn't due to speed, bandwidth or processing power but how Roon works

A very knowledgeable member suggested connecting the core and the endpoint direct to the same router.

I haven't had a drop-out since. 

How do you know it’s “how Roon works”? AFAIK, Roon is agnostic to whether you are on ethernet or wifi. Your description and some of the others actually sounds like you had a wifi/router issue that was causing the drop outs, not Roon. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites



27 minutes ago, firedog said:

How do you know it’s “how Roon works”? AFAIK, Roon is agnostic to whether you are on ethernet or wifi. Your description and some of the others actually sounds like you had a wifi/router issue that was causing the drop outs, not Roon. 

Obviously I could be wrong and I'm not a Roon engineer but there was info somewhere and many others with the same issue I had. 

I have no doubt the WiFi network was sufficient as I could stream Tidal to 3 devices and Netflix to another simultaneously with no issue but couldn't reliably stream Roon/Tidal alone to 1. Speed tests and some router config also confirmed there should be no issue. 

Have not had a single drop out since hard-wiring the core and although I haven't used it in a while I saw no issues using a Chromecast wireless endpoint. 

 

Just my experience and I am still thankful to Sean everytime I use Roon since reading his advice. 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Communicated with Roon. They do recommend connecting the Roon Core and Library location over ethernet. Not because of issues with Roon isself, but because of issues with wifi/home construction/wifi routers.  Same for " high resolution/high performance audio devices".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...
On 15/07/2019 at 12:08 AM, firedog said:

How do you know it’s “how Roon works”? AFAIK, Roon is agnostic to whether you are on ethernet or wifi. Your description and some of the others actually sounds like you had a wifi/router issue that was causing the drop outs, not Roon. 

I certainly use Roon in multiroom at the same time over wifi without issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 15/07/2019 at 7:17 PM, firedog said:

Communicated with Roon. They do recommend connecting the Roon Core and Library location over ethernet. Not because of issues with Roon isself, but because of issues with wifi/home construction/wifi routers.  Same for " high resolution/high performance audio devices".

If you have wired network, yes roon core and music storage should connect to that. The roon endpoints can be wifi no problems. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Roon is definately an excellent software to use, but I think that a lifetime subscription is way too expensive. Instead, a monthly subscription($10~$15) would be very attractive to CAS audiophile. 

Edited by Colourless-
Link to comment
Share on other sites



I’ve been using Roon for a couple of years now and quite like roon radio and the album/ artist reviews that are integrated.

For those looking at end point options, I use Gen 3 Apple Tv’s as they come with an optical out and are cheap as chips 2nd hand. At present I’m using 4 of them and a multi channel slave amp for multi zone music in the house and shed (the shed has its own amp)

One of the features is that you can play different music in different zones, so the kids can be be listening to music separately in the house while I’m listening to decent music while Im tinkering in the shed ?, although you can only control the music selection from one source point which is an IPad, It would be great to be able to control different zones from different IPads simultaneously.

( maybe I just haven’t found a way to do this).

 

I also have an ATV gen 4, but the music is slightly out of sync with the other Gen 3’s  because of the HDMI only out, similarly the Mac optical out is slightly out of sync with the Gen3’s and Gen 4.

 

I found that the core spec is important, I was using an older NUC with the optimised Linux  Roon core but found that the music pitch altered and It was annoying me (ie. the beginnings of songs would sound slightly slow, then a few seconds later roon would catch up and play the next few seconds slightly faster, then normalise.)

It was only slight but I could hear it enough to expect it most times I changed tracks

I changed to a dual core Mac mini and a 1TB SSD which also has optical out and it’s been sweet ever since

 

I have the choice of using the NAS, but changed to the SSD so I can take the Roon server to the beach house easily, the NAS now just backs up the media on the Roon server.

 

 

Edited by MosfetMainac
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 14/12/2019 at 5:08 AM, MosfetMainac said:

although you can only control the music selection from one source point which is an IPad, It would be great to be able to control different zones from different IPads simultaneously.

( maybe I just haven’t found a way to do this).

 

 

 

 

You should be able to set up any ipad, laptop or mobile phone as a remote control and chose any zone you want. In my house we have two iPhones, an Ipad, IMac, laptop and the Mac mini that Roon server runs on. Any of them are used to tell Roon what to play and from where. On top of that, I can use the iPhone as an end point. I do that quite often when I'm doing something noisy in the shed. I put my in ears in, ear muffs over the top and enjoy the music.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 20/12/2019 at 12:30 AM, Pim said:

You should be able to set up any ipad, laptop or mobile phone as a remote control and chose any zone you want. In my house we have two iPhones, an Ipad, IMac, laptop and the Mac mini that Roon server runs on. Any of them are used to tell Roon what to play and from where. On top of that, I can use the iPhone as an end point. I do that quite often when I'm doing something noisy in the shed. I put my in ears in, ear muffs over the top and enjoy the music.

Thanks for that, I did think it was a bit odd!,  will look into what I'm doing wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi all,

 

I've just unboxed all the Hifi gear out and set it up after 5 years. Moved and never really had the time or the inclination to set it up in the new location. So over 5 years ago I smashed head first into Digital big time ripped all the CD's to Flac and bought into the Jriver software. As far as Roon goes sonically I would assume it would be on par with Jriver. But as I breifly understand Jriver has released a cloud store for your music files (excuse me if I have this wrong).

Does Roon offer a similiar service and if so how is it working for all? I get that Roon interfaces with Tidal and maybe other 3rd party services (subscriptions etc), but I like the idea of being able to stream your content from anywhere.

 

Cheers

Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites



29 minutes ago, MJJW said:

Hi all,

 

I've just unboxed all the Hifi gear out and set it up after 5 years. Moved and never really had the time or the inclination to set it up in the new location. So over 5 years ago I smashed head first into Digital big time ripped all the CD's to Flac and bought into the Jriver software. As far as Roon goes sonically I would assume it would be on par with Jriver. But as I breifly understand Jriver has released a cloud store for your music files (excuse me if I have this wrong).

Does Roon offer a similiar service and if so how is it working for all? I get that Roon interfaces with Tidal and maybe other 3rd party services (subscriptions etc), but I like the idea of being able to stream your content from anywhere.

 

Cheers

Mark

From memory you can link a Dropbox account but with Roon you have to be on the same network as the device running the core software so only at home, office etc.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I first  tried Roon a couple a yeas ago when I used the free trail. I wasn’t impressed and the need to use a PC put me of as it wasn’t family friendly. 

 

About a month ago I bought a yearly membership and again wasn’t impressed...until I bought NUC of SNA to use as a dedicated core and gave myself some time to get used to how Roon works. Now I love it. It just works, no mucking around, no glitches , the GUI is slick and intuitive and the way it recommends  music is incredible. The team at Roon have done a great job and really picked a need in the market: makes you wonder why someone didn’t develop this earlier.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

After the recent Sonos EoS / EoL announcement, I expect many people will be interested in running Roon to control Sonos endpoints and to start considering a move to RAAT. I've got a few variants of Raspberry Pi based streamers on the way to test pilot replacing my Sonos Connects and I'm seriously looking at Roon to be the brains of my in home multi-room audio setup. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 19/01/2020 at 2:24 PM, Dasher said:

About a month ago I bought a yearly membership and again wasn’t impressed...until I bought NUC of SNA to use as a dedicated core and gave myself some time to get used to how Roon works.

This is the key .... until you give yourself some time to learn then most pieces of software can be consigned to the too-hard basket.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



29 minutes ago, recur said:

After the recent Sonos EoS / EoL announcement, I expect many people will be interested in running Roon to control Sonos endpoints and to start considering a move to RAAT. I've got a few variants of Raspberry Pi based streamers on the way to test pilot replacing my Sonos Connects and I'm seriously looking at Roon to be the brains of my in home multi-room audio setup. 

Agreed .... it will be interesting to see how long my OLD Sonos components will keep working.  I find that I now mostly use Roon as my controller rather than the Sonos app (except for my bedroom).  Ha, ha ... intrigue !!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used the roon trial imho it’s the friendliest interface I have ever come across for streaming files to my amp and loved how tidal worked with similar music recommendations it’s just a pain I own  a MusicCast amp - it does work great through AirPlay on my iPhone I don’t know if I would use it enough to justify paying for it 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I purchased Audirvarna, twice, and hate it. 

 

I first purchased for my Mac but within months had a new Dell laptop. Got a discount of about 25% but you had to purchase again because they view Mac and Windows completely separately and cannot simply cancel one to the other. Bit of a ripoff in my view.

 

Then the best bit - the windows version was horrible and simply failed - every bloody time. Then to add insult, they introduced an app to control things but wanted $15 to get it. Again, reviews say it is horrible.

 

I cut my losses. 

 

Purchased a roon nucleus+ this month and joined Roon - best thing I have ever done. It works and is a million times better than my experience with AV. 

 

Big thumbs up from me to Roon.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 19/01/2020 at 5:24 PM, Dasher said:

I first  tried Roon a couple a yeas ago when I used the free trail. I wasn’t impressed and the need to use a PC put me of as it wasn’t family friendly. 

 

About a month ago I bought a yearly membership and again wasn’t impressed...until I bought NUC of SNA to use as a dedicated core and gave myself some time to get used to how Roon works. Now I love it. It just works, no mucking around, no glitches , the GUI is slick and intuitive and the way it recommends  music is incredible. The team at Roon have done a great job and really picked a need in the market: makes you wonder why someone didn’t develop this earlier.

 

 

I've also just installed Roon on a NUC I have had foobar running for years. I've been trying all day to get it to finish indexing my library. The roon app seems to constantly be crashing. 12 hours in and I'm at 4100 albums. I think that is only about half. I hope the crashing doesn't continue once the major indexing is over. I've had to have it play music so I know when the music stops that the app has crashed. 

 

Hopefully I like it to shell out money for it when everyone else in the family is happy with their Spotify subscription.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrator

They can struggle indexing a little, also depending on your network configuration and location of your media. What spec is your NUC?

It should settle a little once indexing is complete.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.




×
×
  • Create New...
To Top