Amazingly easy to get a roon endpoint up and running with ropiee

Hello all,

As a new roon user I pondered on how to get a roon endpoint, so since I had an RPi 3B+ lying around, I ordered a HifiBerry Digi+ Pro HAT. Got it today and installed it on top of the RPi

Meanwhile I downloaded ropiee and flashed it onto a micro SD card. Then after installing the SD-card, attaching a network cable and a coax cable between the RPi and my Marantz receiver followed by the power cable, let it boot up and do its thing for a couple minutes, I then pointed my web browser to ropiee.local and got a nice welcoming screen. I basically told it that I was using a HifiBerry Digi+ Pro HAT and not much more.

I had to browse a bit in roon settings until I found settings/audio where I could enable the RPi as a roon endpoint.

After this, It just worked! Which really is the point of this somewhat rambling post. :stuck_out_tongue:

I started up some hi-res music and used the RPi as a source and music ensued! And the signal path said it was bit perfect too.

My VERY initial impression is that the dynamics has gotten noticably better at once, but the audio quality is something I will have to investigate over time.

I am using the RPi’s own switching power supply. Maybe feeding it with a linear PSU would improve matters. Something to look into later.

In conclusion, I am positively surprised that it was so painless to get a roon endpoint up and running. For those thinking of something like this, I can recommend jumping in and giving it a go. For me my only cost was the HifiBerry card since I had everything else lying around already.

Now I need to get a proper case to put it in. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Mikael

P.S.
MQA seems to work as well.

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Did the same yesterday and was also pleasantly surprised on how easy it was.

Highly recommend the flirc.tv cases for a usb connected dac but with hats you probably have to look at the hat supplier options.

RoPieeeXL is just as easy and has many useful extra services. Slowly converting my five DietPi endpoints, one at a time.

The case I got was HifiBerry’s own RPi 3 case with space for their HATs. Simple, black, metal: https://thepihut.com/products/hifiberry-digi-plus-steel-case-black

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Ohh, shiny! Those look nice, but as you said, I need a case that can accomodate a HAT.

I was looking at HifiBerry’s universal plastic case for RPi with a HAT, but this one looks a bit nicer. Thanks for the tip, Martin.

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Is playing “So What” as a test track the audiophile equivalent of “Hello, World”?

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That’s not far from the truth in my case. :slight_smile: When I started to get into jazz (some 25 years ago), I asked friends what I should listen to first, and they all said: "Start with the Kind of Blue album by Miles Davis, so I did, and I’ve listened to that album a lot over the years. It’s a one of a kind.

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I have similar experiences , very simple to set up. I have a bit of a buzz on the output which seems to emanate unit as oppose to anything I can un plug from it. I have yet to try another power supply (using a Pi one) was thinking of swapping to a metal case to offer some screening.

Any suggestions?

My main test track is Vijay Iyer Trio’s Optimism in Accelerando. Just CD quality, but a great test of instrument separation and imaging. As a chaser, 1st movement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade in the timeless Reiner/CSO Living Stereo recording remastered for SACD and available at an 88.1/24 PCM digital download.

As for Pi shields that work with Ropieee, I’m a serious fan of Pi2AES by Pi 2 Design, with 4 simultaneously active outputs — optical, coax, AES, I2S — and outstanding quality with a moderately priced SMPS, no need for fancy LPS. I own two, one for my home office headphone systems and one (currently idle because COVID-19) for the work office system. It does as well or better than much more expensive streamers with fairly substantial DACs (Yggdrasil A2, Sonnet Morpheus, Soekris dac1541).

I really can’t say, since I am brand new to using Raspberry Pi as a digital audio transport, but getting a good power supply could be one thing to look into. My RPi seems to behave well which I am happy about.

Can you describe your Pi setup in more detail? HAT? Connection method to DAC?

I am using the hi fi berry dac+pro connected via ethernet on a pi4. Connected to a cyrus 6a in my workshop. (im busy building some Jantzen speakers at the moment)

Im really pleased with how easy it was to set up and think i need to try it in a different location to see if that changes anything as far as this buzzing goes.

Two thoughts: 1) ground loop, which is a bear to track down; 2) DAC to amp cabling passing too close to an unshielded power cable. I’ve been able to solve 2) by lifting the RCA cables away from the power cables, and using high-quality shielded cables for both signal and power. As for 1), it’s all really black magic (at least to me) and I’ve fortunately not had to deal with it in the last two decades.

Hello Michael. Interesting, but forgive me if I don’t understand the smartness of this but to me it seems that you just spend a significant amount of money and time more than I would do in 2 minutes with a Chromecast?
Best
Claus

Hi there Claus,

Well. It didn’t take much time or effort to assemble this, and costwise the HAT I mounted on top of the Pi was around 50 euro, so fairly affordable I would say. The Raspberry Pi I already had, and it wasn’t being used for anything, which was why I got curious if I could make a roon endpoint this way.

There is also the fact that I don’t have a Chromecast. :slight_smile: But I have to admit that a Chromecast dongle attached to a stereo or active speakers seems to be an interesting option for getting a digital transport to your system.

Hi! Do you know if I must have the DAC-hat
or can I use the ordenary 3,5 mm on Raspberry Pi to get it to work?

Audio out of the RPi is not doable for a reason…it’s sounds horrid and will not pass as a reasonable output for audio to a HIFI system or headphones

I also, am very impressed with how easy it is to setup the RPi with the Ropiee.

Although I have been in tech since the 90’s I have manage to always stay in the Microsoft world and only dabbled very little with Linux, at least from scratch.

Good job, no Great job @spockfish.

–MD

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