Article on DAR about Roon 1.3

Regarding the RCK, this looks like very interesting. :relaxed: It would be great if next Rasp pi (or like) get a M2 connection and a more powerful cpu. This would create an entry level no worries Roon solution (without fancy multiple streams, EQ, …). Otherwise I guess it’s just a matter of time when the desired micro Computers with enough power/connections come available. :clock:

Wouldn’t that be a NUC? I see lightly used i3’s go for about €150 (4GB+SSD), so no need to mess with an underpowered ARM SBC.

Over time, the ARM chips will gain enough power to run Roon Core, but that moment is still a few years off – and I don’t think powerful chips like the A-series that Apple produces would have any price advantage.

But we’ll see.

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Any information on support for Bluesound? I see they are now listed as a HW partner on the Roon site, but the article on 1.3 calls out Sonos support and nothing on Bluesound. I’m crossing my fingers that Bluesound support will arrive with 1.3. I think Bluesound with its better DAC and support for higher res. is a better low cost endpoint than Sonos.

Any news regarding Bluesound will have to come from Bluesound.

While they have announced RoonReadiness, they need to do the integration of RoonReady code into their products – and they are the only ones in a position of telling what, where and when.

As far as I know, Bluesound support is awaiting a firmware update from NAD/Bluesound to their devices to add RAAT into their systems. You might check their forums to find out when a firmware update is due.

From BlueSound forum:

Hi DigitalLA, In October when we announced that we are partnering with Roon, we were hoping to have it integrated by the end of the year and we are continuing to work hard to get it done. We are excited to say that we have it working in our Lab and we are currently putting it through extensive testing to ensure everything is working properly. The next step requires Roon certification so we will be working closely with them to ensure that we are Roon Ready compliant. We expect to complete this process by the end of January, so it’s not long now. Thank you for your patience as we work through this important integration. Andrew

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Nice - finally to get it included is good - then upsampling 44.1khz NAS located files to 192khz and a wired pulse mini that already sounds pretty good, upsampling tidal streaming to the same device (assuming this is included in the Roon update don’t see why not) - look forward to tinkering with this/ seeing and hearing this in action!

Sounds good thanks.
So now all we (or at least I :wink:) need for a ‘perfect’ solution is Dirac support and we’re (I’m) good to go

Hopefully the Sonos integration works out, I could see sprinkling a few Play:1 speakers throughout the house. I’m also hoping that the social integration is strictly opt-in and none of that shows up in the UI unless you enable it. I’m most interested in checking out the addition of “Collections” in 1.3.

Would be super awesome to have RCK by January 20th so I have something to distract me on Inauguration Day/Weekend in DC.

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I’m concerned that RCK might not be distracting enough for that @fritzg :confounded:. Fortunately there are other parts of 1.3 which might hopefully blot out the festivities.

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Well, since I understand one comes with the other, I’m good. :slight_smile:

Feature set looks great. I have a couple of Sonos Connects, one of which is a modified W4S I2s modded Connect. Mr. Darko likes his modded Connect over the Sonore microRendu. That’s a tall order. Love my mR. Having both devices will make for an interesting comparison. Curious to see if Dropbox backup is still in play as well…

Looking forward to the new release.

Bluesound is not 1.3 specific… when they release, it’ll work with 1.2 as well.

Sonos support is something we did, not Sonos.

I imagine he likes the sound of the modded Connect better than the mRendu due to the fact that he doesn’t have to use USB digital with it.

I’m sure you’re spot on. Probably depends on the DAC though. I run my Bryston BDP-1 through a Schiit Gumby BNC. The microRendu is connected to a W4S DAC-2. The modded Sonos Connect is I2s over HDMI for the W4S DAC.

Will Sonos be a RAAT device? Or is it like Airplay? @danny

it is not RAAT. It is like Airplay.

Hopefully with zero loss in quality from the source Redbook material?:slight_smile:

Assuming you’re talking about playing to Sonos devices with Roon 1.3, yes it is lossless up to the 48kHz/16bit limit imposed by the hardware. Anything above that or DSD will be automatically converted before being sent over the network.

(this is also how AirPlay works, except that AirPlay has a slightly lower 44.1kHz/16bit limit)

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