Great news that you now support Chomecast, but what does it really mean for the streaming quality?
To be more precise, what are the differences to streaming and audio quality when using Chromecast compared to the old fashioned Roon implementations into audio-players?
A theoretical system with Roon and Chromecast implemented, would there be any differences when streaming to the two solutions?
This is a good question. Let’s say I want to stream music to a non-networked DAC from Roon. Am I better off using a Chromecast Audio (via its optical output) or a Raspberry Pi running Roon Bridge (also via an optical output)? The former is a simpler solution, but what (if anything) would one be giving up?
“Old fashioned”?
Surely t all depends on the quality of player/hat.
Optical output is limited to 96k on the chrome device (and on some optical outputs), so that could be an issue if you need it.
in theory, if your DAC is good enough to deal with the increased jitter from optical connection, it may not make any SQ difference at all. The chromecast devices are cheap enough to try it and see though.
The Chromecast offers better VFM than any other solution as you also get to use most of the streaming services that are available as well as Roon. Qobuz, Spotify, Deezer, SoundCloud, GPM, bbciplayer radio and off course youtube. Closet to that is either Sonos connect or Bluesound Node 2 with a £300 or more difference. How it compares sonically to them I can’t say.