Does Roon Bridge communicate with the Roon Core?

Roon Software Discussion
1

A very simple query to further my understanding. Simply put does the roon bridge device communicate with the core i.e. if i use tidal/roon with no locally stored music is the core sending the bridge details of what to play using my home network as a small LAN or is the bridge receiving data from roon or tidal via wifi from my router?

Secondly for someone with locally stored music on something like a NAS i understand a streamer can connect to it and forward the digital files to the dac but how can a NAS connect in a situation where you have multiple roon bridges at home? many thanks mk @support

2

Core does the heavy lifting and sends the audio stream to bridge(s) that you’re playing to.

3

It doesn’t matter where the music is located…on the Core or on a computer share or NAS the files all go to the endpoints via the Core. While RoonBridge is an app for installation Roon ready devices also have an integrated RoonBridge service running to communicate via RAAT protocols. ChromeCast, Sonos and Airplay are a little different as they dont support RAAT. Even the very popular Ropieee and DietPi use RoonBridge installations for RaspberryPi platforms.

4

Does that mean if i only use tidal/roon with no locally stored music there is a LAN set up in my home where the roon bridge is always receiving details of what to play direct from my core and never from the tidal cloud.

Router> imac core (ethernet)> roon bridge (wifi) (and never from the tidal cloud or roon to my roon bridge direct via wifi?)

In this case how does a normal computer emit wifi is it actually uploading data?

5

Tidal content or Qobuz will pass from the streaming server through Roon Core to the endpoint.

6

Finally is it acceptable to connect the roon bridge with wired ethernet? many thanks for quick replies

7

Your Roon core software runs on a computer and is the main processor for Roon. This computer is connected to your home network either by ethernet or WIFI, but preferably by ethernet. If you are streaming music from Tidal or Qobuz, the music files come down from those locations to the Roon server then to your internet connected router, then to your Roon core on a computer. After processing by the Roon core software, the music files are sent through your network from the Roon core computer device to your Roon bridge device or Roon end-point device. From there, the music file goes to your DAC and then to your sound system.

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8

so the core my imac has the ability to transmit wifi to the bridge? is this the same as uploading data to the web. it’s a new concept for me.

9

Wifi or LAN is the same to roon but the performance over wifi is limited so you can learn more here

lots more info in the KB area too.

10

For best results, Roon recommends your Roon core computer be connected to your home network with a wired ethernet connection to your router. They also recommend your Roon bridge device or Roon end-point device use a wired ethernet connection. It is also possible to get good performance using a wireless WIFI connection to your router for the Roon bridge device or Roon end-point device, but that is not what Roon recommends.

Many Roon users have their own music files stored on an external hard drive or stored on a NAS. If music is stored on an external hard drive, that drive should be plugged into the Roon core computer USB port. I think a NAS device only need be connected to your home network using ethernet.

11

many thanks James. the more one learns the more you realise you don’t know much.

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12

Initially, I used a wireless WIFI connection for both my Roon core computer and Roon end-point Oppo DVD player. This worked pretty well, but I ran ethernet cables from my router to both devices to get the best possible performance.

13

I’ll just add that many Roon users have Roon end-point or Roon bridge devices in multiple rooms of their home, each connected to a sound system of some sort. I suspect many of these set-up’s might include a mix of wired ethernet connections in some rooms and wireless WIFI connections in other rooms.

14

LAN (Wired) is always better than Wifi for reliability and speed. It is the preferred option unless wifi is your only option. the Core should always ideally be on LAN wired connection.

Obviously a tablet or phone will be wireless as seldom any other options here.

15

thanks for all the advice. i’ve learnt quite alot.

16

I have a mixture of wired and wireless devices, core is wired as it should be but if you choose wisely and have a good wireless network then there is no reason to have flawless wireless.playback. I do across 4 devices. As others have said it’s important to have Roon core on a system that is wired and not wireless. The rest you can experiment with.

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17

The knowledge base might help in general understanding
https://kb.roonlabs.com/

18

Thanks to everyone for the advice here. To summarise my query. My roon core is a late 2013 quad core i5 with 512gb ssd and dedicated nvidia graphics. It is my only source of music and i use it’s optical output straight into my chord mscaler. Optical is recommended for chord audio products. The imac has built in optical i see no reason to rush out and buy another optical source. Optical is also galvanically isolated so i’m not sure if there would be much difference buying a roon endpoint with optical. The problem i have is that i feel the wired ethernet connection into my roon core imac might be affecting the sound quality of the built in optical out and so i might be better running the imac core on wifi. I understand roon always recommend wired ethernet for the core. Given all of this can my roon core imac be run successfully on wifi without sound quality degradation as compared to wired ethernet given the following conditions.

  1. All dsp settings disabled.
  2. Apart from exclusive/integer mode all settings are on the most basic configurations. Only 44.1kHz files are played so no mqa or dsd etc.
  3. I only stream from tidal/roon with no locally stored music library. Therefore only chosen tidal albums in the cloud with roon metadata information/roon player (RAAT) look like the main things being utilised here.
  4. Finally the router is about 2 metres away from imac with very stable internet speeds of around 200Mbps.
    @support Thanks to all
19

The only way to know if your network can handle the WiFi setup is to just try it. If it works, great, if you get dropouts, then go wired. WiFi is very environmentally sensitive, so whether it works for one person is not a 100% indicator it will work for another.

RAAT doesn’t really play an issue into your setup. It is Tidal coming in to the Core and then optical direct to the DAC, right? Given that 1.7 has just changed the buffering strategy for Tidal streams, slower machines like yours should be able to handle it better.

20

When comparing wifi to wired in my setup is the occurrence of drop outs the only defining factor at play here? So no dropouts means wifi is good to go? Can there be a subtle audible change from wired to wifi with a wired connection giving superior sound quality or is this impossible?