Alternative to Sooloos C15 that works for both Roon and Sooloos?

I think you just need to try it now on a portion of your library. You can still keep or go back to Sooloos. See how it sits.

1 Like

Hi John, your plans and assumptions all look fine. When you native export from Sooloos you will get the artwork you edited in as embedded artwork in the exported folders. Roon will pick these up when you scan the exported library.

Roon just watches your folder(s) so you won’t have to laboriously import each album. You’all enjoy that difference.

Shout when you get that export ready and take a look at the knowledge base for good articles which will help.

Sensible suggestion. It might indeed be too soon to switch over completely and require Roon 1.3 to make it more attractive.

I genuinely hope it does because the Sooloos hassles have tried my patience to the limit with the work required after the twinstore crash with deasth of two supposedly better 2TB Seagate Constellation drives exceptionally challenging and tiresome. The twin server setup achieved nix except to nuke both drives instead of just one of them!!

I believe so. USB3 certainly has the theoretical bandwidth to service Roon with a goodly number of Zones playing different music, but I haven’t tried it myself. SSD may be slightly snappier, but I wouldn’t regard that as significant. The main reason for reccomending SSD is reduced failure rate, which you seem to have had more than your fair share of with HDD.

I used a USB3 icybox sitting next to a Windows 10 laptop to run Roon without issue for ages.
I moved on to a Nuc so as to clear the living room of the mess (According to SWMBO)
Domestic harmony is restored as long as I don’t mention the cost.

1 Like

Hi John, sorry to be late to this conversation, luckily you’ve already received vastly more informed responses and advice than I will be able to provide, but FWIW I too migrated from a Sooloos system after my Control 15 died and was unable to be repaired by the Meridian folks for a reasonable amount of money. After much reading of this board, I ended keeping my MS600 and adding USB storage, a SonicTransporter and a refurbished 32GB iPad 2 16GB iPad Air 2 which works just fine as the controller.

I am very, very happy with the hardware now and it all works simply and reliably. For the data transfer, since my C15 was bricked, the Meridian service people pulled off a backup file, which was only partially helpful as that format is not compatible with Roon. But my dealer had a PC with a copy of Meridian’s ControlPC on it, so we used that software to “restore” the backup and then do the native export. Both of those processes took a long time but ran in the background of everything else the dealer was using that PC for. Then I just took the USB drive with the exported files, plugged it in to my SonicTransporter, turned everything on, waited for Roon to finish cataloging/sorting everything and voila, all done and nicely integrated with Tidal. Good luck and hope things go as well for you.

Hi Chris

Thanks for some valuable info - the Ipad2 with 32GB (what I have) DOES work with Roon??? I had gathered from this site it did not.

John

Does he mean an iPad Air 2?

I guess what was meant is an iPad Air 2, with the Air lost in a flurry of frenzied tying – as Roon really does not run on an iPad 2.

Thanks guys. I’m hoping to sell the iPad2 with the Sooloos system. I have someone in mind who could be interested but it looks like I’ll have to buy an MS200 to replace the MS600 I’m hanging in to.

But my reasoning could be unwise and maybe I should let the MS600 go. At the moment it gives out high quality balanced digital, high quality unbalanced digital and analog which I’m feeding to various DACs & amps around the house. Is there an alternative high quality Roon friendly end point available which would do this that you woul recommend?

John

If your happy with the sound, keep it.

I agree, if you are happy with the MS600, keep it. But why would you buy an MS200? It’s time is gone.

I think the OP wants to sell his C10 as a running system. The C10 audio board is gone so adding an MS200 would rectify this.

I can’t think who would pay much for a C10 now though.

John, I just confirmed that the iPad I use to control my system is a 16 GB iPad Air 2. Sorry for my confusion. I think it’s not the GB of storage in the iPad that matters but the bits in the architecture that matter; you need 64 bit architecture to use the Roon IOS app. I looked up your iPad and it’s a 32 bit machine. I had this same problem, wanting to use an older iPad but not being able to because it was a 32 bit machine, so I just bought a refurbished 64-bit, wifi-only machine from the Apple website. I’m sure you can find other outlets as well. I found a post on an Apple support page saying that iPads after November 2013 are 64 bit, which means the Airs, Pros and recent minis. Hope this helps.

Thanks Chris.

I have been looking at some of the Chinese tablets but am unsure of their Roon compatibility so like your idea of a refurbished unit from Apple, something which had not occurred to me so thanks for the trip

John (finding there is a lot more to learn)

LOL, “TIP” not trip. Now if Roon could send people on a trip, wouldn’t that be something!!!

I often feel like it does. Have found myself in very unusual places through Roon/Tidal.

I saw your post about the Atom Z8300 tablet but am not quite sure enough that the graphics are up to spec to comment. Some other folks here will know. I use an iPad mini 3 very happily. The second hand market is quite good for 64bit iPads. Daniel @rugby might be able to say something about Android on that tablet.

Yes Andy, I’m coming back to Nick’s earlier suggestion about the iPad as being the most reliable option. It appears that Roon has heavy graphic demands that are beyond many tablets.

And I’m still in a bit of a quandary about choosing an end point for Roon. Initially I thought to hang on to my MS600 but now feel it should sell with the rest of the Sooloos outfit both to make it more attractive to sell and to ensure the buyer gets maximum benefit from the system.

I’ve looked at AURALIC ARIES (available here in Australia at a reasonable price) but have not found any other possibilities yet. Any suggestions gratefully received.

John

You could check out the Antipodes range.http://www.antipodesaudio.com

I’ve had an Aries for about a year and it’s worked well as a Roon Ready endpoint. It’s probably the best Wi-Fi endpoint. I haven’t been using it lately because I prefer to use HQ Player and an NAA in my main system and the microRendu fits the bill there. Unfortunately I understand Auralic don’t plan to provide an NAA with the Aries anytime soon.

There are other less expensive devices that can do 80-90% of an Aries Roon Wi-Fi performance, and if wired Ethernet is available then I’d reccomend the microRendu, particularly with the LPS-1 power supply that UpTone also do. The Aries has a lot of features that the microRendu lacks, but they are redundant with Roon and when it comes to rendering Ethernet to USB then the microRendu has a very focussed “less is more” design philosophy.

After you’ve looked into it, if you’re still interested in an Aries send me a PM. I’m in Australia also (Richmond, Melbourne) and can offer you “as new” for less than the current discounted price. (I have the twin femtoclock model with the linear power supply). Do look at the microRendu though.