I just heard about Roon and am interested to know if it will fit my needs.
I have two systems.
One is a whole home Mirage Audio System by Autonomic Controls that supports two-channel Hi Res playback and also comes built-in with Tidal streaming support.
The other is a multi-channel system in a dedicated media room that includes a Datasat RS20i audio processor, an Oppo BD player and Kaleidescape Alto and Strato movie servers and a Kaleidescape disc server.
One configuration that might work would be to use Roon with a NAS that would sync with the Mirage server via USB for whole home playback and would have a digital audio output that I could use to connect to the Datasat RS20i audio processor for playback in my media room.
So here are some questions:
I am finding the Mirage server a bit klunky in terms of the iOS control apps. Although I have access to Tidal content, the Tidal integration leaves much to be desired (not on a par with Oppo, for example, which uses the native Tidal app). How would you recommend integrating Roon into my existing whole home distributed system to get the most functionality from what Roon has to offer?
What other Roon Ready devices could I consider that could eventually replace the Mirage system to use with my speaker connections (all centrally wired from a single equipment closet)?
I listen mostly to classical music. I can see from the community postings that Roon unfortunately has not found a workaround to the sorry state of classical music metadata. How would you characterize the current Roon user experience with classical music?
I am interested in your advice on setting Roon up to play both stereo and multi-channel music through my Datasat RS20i audio processor in my media room. It would be helpful to know whether I would need any special NAS setup to push music to the processor using Roon.
I also see that multi-channel is not yet officially supported with Roon, although that you are working on it. What is the latest on this?
I am interested in this topic too. I am considering a whole house audio system, either wired, or wireless. The Roon + Roon speaker configuration sounds good. However, most of the end points today needs an amplifier + speaker.
I wish there are wireless speakers that could work out of the gate!
Hey @Kurvenal – I don’t have a real timeline for multi-channel to announce, as there is still a good deal of work to be done and we don’t generally offer public timelines until the functionality is in pretty good shape and moving onto the testing phase. That said, this is a priority for us, and we expect the work to happen relatively near term.
You can find a full list on our Knowledge Base, and you can find some recent discussion of cheaper endpoints here. I should note that most of those are DACs, so I assume you would need an amplifier (or two) to replace the Mirage.
We’re looking forward to lots of new Roon Ready devices hitting the market soon, so definitely keep an eye on this site.
There’s absolutely work to be done in this area but the work is well understood, and in progress. Lots of major improvements are coming that we believe should solidify Roon’s handling of classical music as unmatched by anything else out there.
We’ve heard a lot of feedback from classical fans and we’ve used that feedback to design the current round of improvements, but we’re always interested in hearing more, so feel free to let us know what you’re seeing, what works well, and where you think we can improve.