I put a Chromecast in the garage and it is fine especially for your trial purposes.
I understand. I’ve been using Roon for about 6 months now, I used J. River
prior to that, and I’ve very happy with Roon’s performance and SQ. My only
other suggestion to you would be to try to find a streaming DAC or a Music
Streamer with an I2S output and a DAC that has an I2S input. USB is
terrible. I would avoid it. Good Luck.
Chromecast is a very good, cheap way of adding Roon. It’s output is bit perfect via optical, so mainly down to your DAC, DSP and speakers. I’m unsure how a previous poster could’ve found it unlistenable. When I first got mine I used it with TIDAL 16/44.1 files from my phone and it was superb. The non hapless playback is a pain with Tidal, but maybe via Roon it plays gapless? I don’t know.
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Playback through a Chromecast is gapless with Roon. And sound quality is quite good, I think you would be hard pressed to hear a difference between it and more expensive devices in an A/B test. Sucks that CCA’s cannot be grouped with the HDMI Chromecast’s though.
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I think it comes down to the quality of the DAC connected to the CCA. That is, ability to filter out noise from the inputs. All well-designed DACs should do this.
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Hello Filip,
I have been using Chromecast Audio (CA) since years streaming from Google Music since years with very good results.
Recently I started using ROON and also use the CA to stream to the my integrated amp (Technics (National Panasonic) SU-3400 from 1973) with excellent results on the FOCAL ARIA 926 speakers. It works great.
I even tested the DAC quality in the CA against the Dragonfly Red (from Audioquest) and did not discern that much difference streaming the same tracks from ROON. So this attests to the quality of the DAC in the CA.
I hope this helps.
Hi. I don’t know whether you’re still interested but I tried Chromecast Audio this week and have been delighted with this low cost bit perfect way of getting an optical signal to my DAC. The Roon implementation has exceeded all my expectations.
I currently have one minor issue with occasional stuttering that I hope will be fixed by adding Ethernet to the Chromecast.
I’m using one too, it’s very good at the price. I get the occasional stutter too. I think that’s just how it is. I thought Chromecast is WiFi-only?
By default it is (except Ultra) but you can buy separately a PSU with ethernet connection.
Oh I never know that. Thanks