12 zone wired whole house system - need to understand Roons part

I hope that there is good airflow in the cabinet - you don’t want the Nucleus to overheat…

Hi Geoff. All of the zones airplay via the Casaserver. The Roon Server appears to talk with the CS well as it sees all of the speaker sets and even the room groups. It works like a charm using the phone, iPad and MacBook app.

The Nucleus should be fine. The cabinet is purpose built and has temperature activated exhaust fans. This is the setup I’ve been seeking for quite some time.

Thanks again for your help. This community is a wealth of knowledge and very helpful and especially so to those who neglect reading the documentation before diving in headfirst :upside_down_face:

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I just thought I post an update after receiving and installing the Nucleus into my system. Fabulous!!! I am so impressed with how everything works together, how great it sounds and how easy it is to manage my music library.

I’m not an audiophile per se, but I love music and like having it play throughout the house and in the yard. It’s a seamless experience when I can walk around a rather large house and have music playing uninterrupted. The CasaTune server performed all of this on its own, but the Roon complements it with a superior UI and file management system. For those that don’t know, CasaTunes generally caters to commercial clients - restaurants, hotels, etc. I only know of it because I have quite a few friends in both industries. I asked how they managed their music and announcements.

The way my setup now works with the Nucleus installed is, the Casaserve distributes the music to the 12 zone amps directly which in turn are wired to all the speaker sets. The Roon Server acts as my source and controller. Without the Casaserver, the Roon would not be able to recognize the 12 zones. The Nucleus sends the files via LAN to the CS even though it’s housed in the same cabinet. I haven’t tried to physically connect them yet, but maybe there’s no need to do so.

I searched for a widget for Roon in the forums and read the responses. I guess that’s not happening any time soon. I only desire one for when I’m working in my office and need to speak on the phone. I thought a simple widget allowing me to mute the playback would be great. What I do have is the CS UI for that. I keep it resized to a small corner of my monitor. The additional benefit aside for muting or stopping the playback is I can see what’s playing and can also skip tracks if I desire. Sometimes I don’t recognize and artist from a playlist or a stream and having the ability to just glance at a small windows is perfect. The Roon UI window doesn’t resize as small and generally has too much info to be of use and the smaller resolution.

All that’s my story and I’m sticking to it :slight_smile:

There are a few third party remote controls, but all require an extra box to do the integration. The ones I use are…

@DrCWO has a few devices, although RooMax is probably the best (I have one and am really enjoying it).

You need a raspberry Pi with his software or a rooMax box, and a paid license (as well as buying the remote).

I use a few IKEA remotes. To use these you need a raspberry pi running home assistant, with a zigbee usb dongle. The software is all free and open source, but you need to set it up.

The other option that comes to mind is. Raspberry Pi running rooPieee - which can work with a remote control.

This slightly out of date guide is easy to follow and gives you the basics.

I use rooPieee to give me Roon endpoints (which you don’t need), but it can also act as a remote for any zone. I don’t have personal experience of the remote facility.

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I did read bout those. Not sure I’m technically competent enough to get them working lol Besides I’m usually looking at a monitor when I need to mute or reduce volume. The house has a Lutron Homeworks system. The Casa unit works with Lutron, but I don’t have them unified. I’m not sure it’s worth doing so. I have full control over the sound system from a number of Apples devices and some are portable - residing in my pocket lol But sitting at my desk it’s nice to have some control, albeit limited, and still have a view of what’s playing.

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Not sure if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for, but there’s a native Mac desktop menubar widget that displays what Roon is playing, along with a play/pause/skip buttons.

To quickly control volume I normally switch to the Roon app via the dock and then use command + the keyboard arrows to adjust it up or down.

Another handy shortcut is command + J or K which will skip back and forth a track. See Roon Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list.

Home assistant integrates with both Roon and Lutron.

But as you say this much be all a bit technical / DIY for you.

Perhaps one for the future….

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I posted this in the original thread on the Control Center. :slight_smile: Aswesome new feature in Sonoma for Roon - #5 by LiveSteam

You can set Roon up to send ‘Now Playing’ information to a web browser.

So if you can find an app that can display as webpage as a small floating desktop window / widget, you’d might be on the way to getting that you’re after.