There are many Roon Ready devices available to stream over the network and utilize the high end DAC in you processor. Simplest is to get a HIFIBerry with the Digital card. It is Roon ready and you can stream from your Core to the HIFIBerry connected to your digital inputs on your processor allowing it to handle the DA process. 192/24 capable.
The topic of this discussion is the new Apple Music hi-res offering. Roon doesnât integrate with this so Roon doesnât matter at all in this discussion. Apple Airplay 2 is locked to a 48K bit rate. So you canât get anything higher than 48k to apple-enabled devices. So you need to have a direct connection to your Mac to get 192k/24bit files if youâre subscribing to the new Apple music service.
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Hey Kris â weâre discussing the future virtues of Apple Music here. At this moment, the only way play the HighRes files it offers is via a USB DAC connected to a Mac (or iOS device, most probably). Theoretically, an Android device could stream 96/24 from Apple Music over Chromecast â which would be a bit ironic.
As far as Roon goes, youâre right â thereâs multiple ways to ship out HighRes files from Roon. But hey â thatâs what it was designed to do. 
Something worth considering as a music lover is Apple pays almost double what Spotify does (and the highest that I could find, higher than Tidal, didnât see Qobuzs rates) to the musician per stream.
So you can also feel good about using Apple Music.
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Up until now I had no hopes, but now for Roonâs sake I hope they at least try. I do not see how Apple is different from Tidal or Qobuz, all three have Web player, all of them have apis and it is just a matter of negotiation.
I do not want Roon to fail, they offer something unique, both Apple Music streaming and Roon complement each other. Roonâs suggestions on some genres are simply magical. Search better. RAAT protocol seem to be more robust than AirPlay, metadata way more extensive. Putting them together would be a win win combination for us.
Regardless, all of my local music is available through Apple or Roon app, at the same time, which one I chose to use to play is almost irrelevant to me, I do prefer Roon, but when Apple lossless is here, I probably will choose Apple.
So in that respect of pressing play in either, Roon has already lost. Thatâs probably 95% of what I do.
Metadata editing on local files is much easier in Apple for me. Queuing next album or track and queue editing has its cons and pros in both.
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I was merely clarifying. The statement he replied to was a question of whether any hi-res files required a DAC. His response what that a DAC has to be connected to the MAC and that there is NO WAY to stream (192/24) to a network device with a mac. Anyone who read that and does not understand Roon and its features would be mislead as to the capabilities of Roon possibly discounting it as an option.
All I keep thinking about is an impending price war. Artists are already paid pittance as it is and this surely will not help.
That said I dont think that being able to make music should automatically mean you should become a celebrity and rake in the cash. Are they really doing more work than I am in a given week? Music for the love of it rather than the âmoney of itâ is a good thing. However with the streaming rates going forward perhaps most of the artists may now be jealous of my modest income instead?
As long as Apples is not planning to undercut the competition to force them under and then raise prices, they currently offer the best rates for artists. 1 cent per stream. And the 9.99/month is pretty standard so instead they are providing better services at the same price, so cutting into their own margins rather than Artists.
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So there is working airplay2 code, just not as nicely packaged as shairport. With a bit more work this should allow full integration into airplay2 with multi room etc.
One of the reasons I wonât take the Roon lifetime subscription. Things change quickly and I am a pessimist. I hope Roon can navigate through coming years but I just could not risk itâŠ
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What app does this? Could be very useful!
Itâs called Music Tracker:
Also use Marvis for Roon like focus features:
I also created daily mixes in Marvis so it has a bit of Spotifyâs feature set too.
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Obviously todayâs news will have an impact on Qobuz/Tidal and therefore on Roon. But itâs difficult to know how much of an impact. As it stands both Apple and Amazon offer a rather limited endpoint provision, certainly when compared with Qobuz/Tidal integrated into Roon. Spotifyâs is better due to Spotify Connect.
Of course there are a number of people who are ready to switch from Qobuz/Tidal. Redbook & hi-res provision is a âgreen lightâ moment for them. But others, myself included, use Qobuz/Tidal with Roon integration for a rich endpoint experience that cannot currently be replicated by any other provider.
The unknown question is how many people are ready to switch and how many are not. Thatâs not the cue for a pointless poll, simply an observation that prediction without hard evidence is simply speculation. Nothing wrong with speculation (itâs quite fun) but who knows what lies ahead.
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Assuming Airplay gets upgraded (as discussed before, thatâs a big if) to support high res then that can make up the gap with Spotify connect for most people I imagine (other people can comment on if this is true).
Obviously Roon is much prettier and for a lot of people, with massive libraries, itâs the only real option.
Itâs the people in the middle that are less certain. If you can upload your files where they arenât on the service, you get high res and airplay can allow for that lossless quality, do you switch?
Given Qobuz has talked on their stream before about being unable to lower their prices (they were asked) because they are as low as they can go without losing money, I am assuming that they wonât lower their prices. Their download subscription is unique but their app is pretty rough and they are now very expensive.
Tidal will lower their hifi tier (CD) but I would assume they wonât cut their master tier completely. Theyâll argue that itâs unique, cut the price slightly perhaps but not eliminate.
In the world above Roon is the most compelling software but their dependency on these subscriptions can make it difficult I feel for people in the middle.
A small affordable (<$99) device or a software solution for the Pi that could do airplay 2 and digital out would be a huge deciding factor.
A long time ago I suggested Roon implement shairport into the core, this would be one more reason to do so (or a new airplay2 solution).
It would allow Apple Music integration without needing any of apples APIs, while still taking advantage of Roonâs DSP features. Would work the same as internet radio stations, just the source would be an Apple device with AirPlay.
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The problem with all these companies is they donât make it easy to output hires files. Amazon still doesnât offer too many solutions and Apple will need to update AirPlay 2 if they want this to work. Spotify hasnât even promised hires files but claims all their Spotify Connected devices will be able to at least do lossless.
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Apple and Amazon are more concerned about pulling users into their ecosystems. There has been no wastage of time by Amazon trying to satisfy audiophile desires, including keeping consistent data rates rather than adapting them according to network traffic, and providing control of sample output rates at computer interfaces. Whether there will be any greater effort on Appleâs part than on Amazonâs remains to be seen. This is the specialty of Roon.
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For those who responded to my earlier post mentioning that you currently need a DAC to be directly connected to a device to access either bit-perfect and/or high-res when using Apple Music, or, talking about the fact that there is currently no way to beam hi-res or bit-perfect via Airplay, and somehow view this as an impediment to adoption, please bear in mind that this will likely be an improvement in fidelity for somewhere in the neighborhood of 99% of current users.
Apple isnât doing this for the miniscule % of users on boards such as this one or Head-Fi. Most everyone will be listening via mobile devices anyway, and will hear an improvement, even if iOS resamples their audio from 16/44 or 24/96 to 24/48.
On the other side of the coin, a user who would care enough to want bit-perfect out of their device currently needs a dongle and a DAC hanging off of their device, anyway.
Rest assured, the network/Airplay situation as you describe today, in this moment, will not remain so for long, either. It may not be bit-perfect via Airplay right now, but, just as Apple added Frame-Rate and Dynamic-Range match to the Apple TV in order to satisfy videophiles, I believe that they will undoubtedly be capable of allowing some form of bitrate-match on current and future products.
Perhaps current products with Airplay 2 will only be able to bitrate match up to 24/48, but, Iâm sure any future Airplay products will allow higher sample rates, and there will be licensees lining up.
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I think there is still a long way to go for Apple to become a good alternative for people to use their hires offer. AM letâs users turn a switch to allow lossless and hires streaming. This for a good reason: average AM users do not want to care about their lousy networks and WiFi. All this will be challenged and most probable result is that the stream does not play reliable as it does with AAC. ALAC will have higher demand on AirPlay. Dropouts are programmed, specifically on the road with lousy 3G or 4G. All that makes Apple take the current decision only to offer hires to AM with making the user conscious that he/she accepts issues. Hires AirPlay will be a long way to go. At least this is my speculation. Roon and RAAT will be safe for the time being as it is sold to those that invest into a full hires chain, and like to fiddleâŠ
Is the Apple Music Atmos library somehow larger than Tidalâs? Will it downsample to 5.1, or allow the base to play Mch without objects?