Connecting Marantz NA6006 to Roon (Airplay mode vs RAAT)

[Carl]

@Mikael_Ollars

Sorry to digress, but this is also interesting!
It was my assumption also, that RAAT was used internally, when a combined Core+Bridge was playing music? I mean over the local IP stack. Hmm

@Henry_McLeod

It also uses the protocol internally between subsystems in a computer. So it would use it to communicate to an internal or external sound card, or indeed a USB DAC connected to the core.

Hi Chaps,

You are both correct these days RAAT is also used by Roon internally it is now part of the application’s architecture.

However, in this case the discussion was about Airplay vs. TOSlink (SPDIF) … the former is a network protocol (for data) the later is not, it’s a bitstream to a DAC when the the timing of the stream can’t be governed by the clocks in the DAC. So whilst RAAT is the internally within Roon it is used in quite a different context.

Those posts are referring to USB DACs or internal sound-cards with DAC’s when the DAC’s clock controls the flow of data to the DAC … and it can signal back to RAAT to manage the data rate.

In the case of an external SPDIF / TOSLink connected DAC there is no feedback, and thus the source device controls the flow … Roon still uses the RAAT architecture within the Core to drive the output but it is synchronous so not really using the feature set of RAAT.

I guess this is why I typically only reference the uses of RAAT for network connected devices (and asynchronous USB DACs) … I conceded that this is a simplification but (dare it say) fits well when discussing SPDIF/TOSlink connected DACs.