Hi Gabriel,
There are some very happy Bluesound owners who are reporting trouble free operation with Roon. I was one of the unlucky ones and if you look through my past posts you will be able to read through the kind of problems I encountered. I don’t have the Node 2i any more but I have a Flex 2i which when used with Roon it is working so so for me (see above for reported issues). Airplay 2 on the other hand works reliably and the sound is really good with it. One issue I encountered with Airplay 2 it is that the volume control implementation in Bluesound appears to be logarithmic so the first 60% of the scale is barely useful and there is only a small portion that allows for meaningful volume changes. I would test that with the Node 2i to see if it is the same case.
Regarding Roon and Node 2i, have you enabled the Node 2i via ‘Settings’ and then ‘Audio’? If so then I would try the following via Roon to test how well it works with it:
- Start playback (on Node 2i) and notice how long it takes after you tap play for the music to start. Ideally it should not be more than 1-3 seconds.
- During playback try skipping the track to the next and then immediately again to a next and so on. Ideally there should be no issue with this operation (in my case playback would eventually freeze after a few track skips in succession).
- During playback try moving the slider to fast forward the track and then back again. Ideally it should resume playback without problems (in my case, after a few back and forth slider moves, playback would start freezing or alternatively it would take 7-10 seconds to resume).
- Try grouping the Node 2i with a different zone and start playback. See if the music is in sync and whether it remains in sync after a while.
In my case (at least with the Flex 2i), airplay 2 directly from iTunes or my iPhone works really well and more reliably than using Roon to control the Bluesound speaker.
Let us know what you find 