Hello, when setting up an airplay group with my Auralic Vega G2.1 and a B&O essence, I notice there is a signifcant delay with the Auralic coming after the B&O. Can this be solved? I read something about sync delays which can be set in Roon when grouping zones, but I can’t find it.
Anybody who can help?
As a side comment, the Auralic replaces a Hegel H190. With the Hegel I have no sync issues
Edit: The answer below is not appropriate. I missed the ‘airplay’ group part of the question. Whilst the Zone grouping delay appears for RAAT endpoints, it does not appear to be available on Airplay endpoints.
A Zone grouping delay (in ms) can be found in the advanced section of the device setup. Set a positive delay on the zone within the group that 'lead’s the rest.
Select Device Seup by, for example, right clicking on the zone icon (on desktop remotes) and you will see the set of devices in the group.
Select the one you want to adjust and you will get to the device setup for that endpoint.
Scroll down if necessary to get to “Show Advanced”
Expanding the advanced section and again scrolling down if necessary and you will see:
I believe that this setting has no effect when the zone/endpoint is used outside of a group.
Thus, you can set this up with a ‘super group’ consisting of all your compatible endpoints/zones and then adjust the delay of each one to be correctly synced within that group. Once this is done, you can tear down the ‘super group’ and then, whenever you create a group with a subset of these zones/endpoints, they should all be in sync.
Thank you for your help! However, when playing via Airplay this setting doesn’t show up. This is the setup screen for the B&O Essence. I should be able to “delay” this one, but it doesn’t give me the sync delay setting.
Any thoughts how to proceed?
I’m sorry. I missed the fact that you were using Airplay - or at least I didn’t realise that there would be a difference.
Presumably you are using Airplay because your B&O essence is not Roon Ready. Of course the Auralic is Roon Ready but a Roon Ready Auralic endpoint can not be combined with an Airplay endpoint in a multi-room setup 
I have never used Airplay - let alone Airplay in a multi-room setup - so I can’t really help you. All my endpoints are RAAT (Roon Ready).
However, I suspect that, since no delay setting is available in the Device Setup for your Airplay endpoints, that delays for sync purposes cannot be added to Airplay endpoints in Roon. I can’t think where else it would be sensible to put the necessary setting.
Wade, indeed I am using airplay only in this multi-room setting because the B&O is not Roon Ready. When playing the Auralic in stand-alone I either use Roon or the Auralic Lightning app.
Thanks a lot for your feedback. Much appreciated.
Nevertheless, it would be great to find a solution to combine my Auralic and the B&O playing together without sync issues.
With different manufacturers of speakers using the AirPlay 1 protocol from Roon will always cause sync issues.
I always ran into a small sync issue with multiple HomePods and Sonos speakers.
My solution, as no sync option existing in Roon was to use an iOS remote device as the endpoint and then AirPlay to the speakers. I don’t recall running into sync issues this way, but this was likely due to AirPlay 2 being used. So not lossless to the speakers.
Hope this helps.
Sorry Lewis Airplay2 is lossless if you use Roon and system Airplay. It only isn’t if the app used uses low latency streaming like Apple Music.
Completely correct that AP2 is lossless in some cases 
I was to believe that connecting an iPhone to AirPlay speakers from the control centre bypassed the app. This then used AP2 AAC 256kbps.
Happy to be corrected.
In the workaround, the phones control centre is used, so AP2 
The iPhone is the sender and the receiver(s) the speakers. Selecting to more than one means multi room.
So it may appear in this case, AP2 to AP2 is lossy.
Never simple is it
Well in this scenario it was 2 x lossless streams using the phones system airplay, the 2 are grouped so only can use Airplay 2 as protocol as Airplay 1 doesn’t support grouping. I checked bandwith out of phone this confirmed it as did streams to both the Sonos and Wiim.
Back to the OPs question:
A Wiim Pro (plus) (or a Raspberry Pi with an audio HAT if into DIY) could be added to the B&O essence connected by RCA analogue input to convert it to a Roon Ready endpoint. Then they would be able to use a Roon Ready zone grouping and thus be able to use the Zone Grouping Delay setting offered by Roon Ready endpoints.
Edit:
Looking in more detail at the B&O Essence, I don’t think that the above solution is best. It looks like the speaker connection is a digital one, so using the RCA line in would result in a D->A (in the Wiim/Pi), A->D (in the B&O hideaway box), D->A (in the speakers audio chain) - which is two conversions too many
However, it should provide a solution that will work…
My Wiim doesn’t do a D to A if it passing an incoming digital signal out Coax or Toslink.
That’s true - but I didn’t see coax or Toslink on the B&O in the in quick search that I did.
Maybe the OP can clarify. If the B&O does have either of these, then the basic Wiim Pro is good enough - no need for the Pro Plus.
Hello,
The WIIM is a very good suggestion. I am looking into it. I used to have a Raspberry PI with Ropiee, but that one died.
The Essence only has analogue line-in, so the Wiim pro should be sufficient.
Just to provide more info. The speaker outputs from the Essence are analogue, so no additional A/D + D/A conversions. It looks like digital connections but these are the B&O connections to typical B&O active speakers.
If you will be relying on the Wiim D/A, and no other conversions are happening, you may be better off with the Wiim Pro Plus. The Plus is reputedly better audio quality.
Disclaimer: I don’t have either Wiim device so I can’t personally vouch for the audio quality.
