Hi. I have one RPi running RoPieeeXL. All works great with Roon and I can Airplay to it from an Apple device.
However when I try to group the RPi with another Airplay speaker it doesn’t allow you. I think this might be because the RoPieeeXL is not native Airplay (is it even Airplay2?).
So my next thought it whether two RPi’s with RoPieeeXL installed can be grouped together in Airplay?
I’d love to know if this works, if so then I will eventually replace the Airplay speakers over time with RPi’s running RoPieeeXL.
I much prefer to use Roon for multi-room however other people in the home are used to Airplay so its a deal breaker if I can’t do this with RopieeeXL.
Zones can only be grouped with other zones of the same type, meaning Squeezebox zones cannot be grouped with RAAT zones, Meridian zones can’t be grouped with Airplay zones, etc.
See the knowledgebase article. Also, not that Ropieee is the bridge not the zone. It is the device connected to Ropieee (the RPi) whether a hat or USB DAC that are the zones. To get the full benefit of Roon use RAAT not Airplay. However, to answer your question, you can group Airplay zones.
If you mean group them using airplay on the iOS device for airplay from another app on the phone/tablet multizone playback on iOs is limited to airplay 2 not standard airplay which Ropppie XL allows. So you can only airplay to one ropppie XL at a time outside of Roon.
In Roon as Martin explained you can group them as airplay zones but that won’t work outside of the Roon app, also is not needed as they will group in Roon using Roons own streaming RAAT which is far superior.
Go Settings -> Audio and enable the Pi for both RAAT and Airplay. Name them something obvious.
When you want to group the Pi with an Airplay speaker you group the Pi’s Airplay zone. This meets the same protocol requirement for grouping zones (they are now both Airplay).
I’ll give you another answer because it is unclear from your question if you’re trying to group Zones in Roon or grouping Airplay devices using an Apple product.
Grouping Airplay devices is kind of stupid complicated. It depends on both what you’re using to group and if the devices are Airplay 1 or 2. For any speaker that speaker must be grouped using Airplay 2. Other devices can be grouped with Airplay 1 depending on what you use to group them.
Now, the software RoPieeeXL uses to provide Airplay support supports Airplay 1 only. If you’re really adventurous this is early code with, what appears to be, good results https://github.com/ckdo/airplay2-receiver. I assume this may find its way back into https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync at some point. Then it could be brought into RoPieeeXL (if I’m understanding how RoPieeeXL implemented this correctly). You could use diet-pi and try implementing both ap2-receiver and Roon Bridge as diet-pi already supports bridge.
So yes I was trying to group via Airplay from an Apple device (iPhone and iPad). All the Apple devices are Airplay2, and given that RoPieeeXL is Airplay 1 this makes sense why I cannot do this.
I agree RAAT is far more superior, however Airplay is something others in the home are very used to so the learning curve is zero. So it’s a deal breaker if I can’t do this yet with RoPieeeXL.
I will probably just get a decent hat for the RPi and use it in the office with a pair of decent active monitors (maybe the Kef LSX).
I think I can make it work, as long as I can group using Roon. Just need to train others on using Roon to group which is the challenge now! Thanks for the help.
