Hey @John_Burke1, welcome to Community, and thank you for your kind words. I agree with your impressions 100%!
I’ve been using the Stream Sapphire for Roon Ready Relay testing since mid-November of last year, and I share your excitement. As you pointed out, the Victrola turntables can stream vinyl to any Roon-supported device in your home.
One of my favorite ways to stream vinyl with Roon is to connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones to my iPhone Roon remote while moving around the house! The sound quality is excellent, it’s super fun, and my record collection is getting a lot more attention. I’m loving it!
I don’t love the idea of having to use a third party app (like the one provided by Victrola) to manage playback. If I can’t use a Roon control surface to manage playback (select which turntable is routed to which outputs, DSP settings to apply to each zone, etc.) then I’m out. Victrola order cancelled. :-/
FWIW, I have been on a decades long quest to digitize all of my vinyl. My protocol is from my vintage, but high quality turntable with a Denon DL-160 hi output mc cartridge, to the phono preamp section of a McIntosh C220 preamp to the Sweetvinyl SC-2+, which removes clicks and pops, reduces surface noise, and digitizes the input up to 192/24. I also can insert a parametric or graphic EQ and balance control into the recording chain. The digitized recording is then edited on my laptop for track splits and metadata, and, finally, the files are copied onto my music server. So my digitized vinyl sounds great, and is fully integrated with my music files for Roon. I hope to live long enough to complete the task!
This is quite interesting and as someone looking for a turntable upgrade soon this has piqued my interest.
I am not turned off by a digital out on the turntable, and the ability to send to other Roon connected payers but I definitely appreciate the analog only audio-path traditional setups offer.
The one solution I would like to see in “Digitizing Vinyl” would be either via NFC tags or QR codes or similar, allowing the displaying of the metadata of the playing vinyl. The Vinyl could have a NFC tag added that links the Discogs metadata, and allows Roon to display metadata, my ideal use case would be via the web display. Not particularly interested in digitizing the audio itself.
I would add that the main draw to Roon besides ARC to me was the metadata offerings & the Spotify like interface.
Bringing that to Vinyl would be revolutionary imho.
An intriguing idea. For me, I think a full auto (or auto-return) turntable might be a sensible development as this feature almost encourages you to be out of the room during playback. I have visions of dashing around the house like someone possessed to lift the tonearm at the end of the side.
I fully agree here. If I cannot control the RRR stream in the Roon interface (like any other source - Tidal, Qobuz, local files, radio stations) there is something seriously wrong in the concept.
To me, this only says that it works with the Victriola app, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work with the Roon app. I can control Roon playback on my Naim streamer with the Naim app as well, doesn’t mean I can’t use the Roon app, either.
I don’t know, but it seems bold to draw conclusions from this ambiguous wording
I’d be happy to be proven wrong. So far, no one has shared screenshots of the Roon UI showing how Roon Ready Relay actually works. I see no additional tabs or changes in Roon to support RRR.
Until we see an example of Roon initiating and controlling playback from RRR sources, it’s safe to assume that all is managed via 3rd party apps as shared above.
I don’t know about initiating, maybe that doesn’t make much sense with a TT, but I sure expect being able to choose zones and use Muse in the Roon app. Clearly we need more information, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume either way.
Right. Although I’m curious, I’m unwilling to spend ~$1k just to find out how Roon Ready Relay works.
With the rooPlay extension, I am able to initiate and manage all aspects of playback from Roon. It works beautifully, but I might prefer a native solution with lower latency.
Perhaps someone on this thread who has Roon Ready Relay working with one of the Victrola turntables will share some screenshots to show us how it works.
I open this screen from “My Live Radio” and hit “Play now”. A few seconds later, Roon is streaming the output of my Parks Audio Puffin phono preamp at 24-bit, 96 kHz to any or all zones I have selected in Roon.
A native solution might be able to use A.I. to detect the album and track playing and match it to Roon’s metadata database in order to display suitable album cover art after a few seconds of playback. This is the sort of thing I was hoping for. Perhaps we will get there eventually…
This is how the node-roon-api-audioinput appears in Roon which was what the Vicrorola was previously using. Although agree, it would be good to see a working example of the latest Vicrorola turntable streaming into Roon.
Many good comments here. My intention wasn’t to sell anyone on buying a Victrola turntable, but just to share my experience. I bought the turntable a year ago (impulse buy from Woot!) to use with my ancient 20 year old Sonos system. The fact that I can now also play the turntable to my non-Sonos endpoints is an unexpected bonus
As people suspected, there is almost no control from the Roon app, except volume. Playback can be stopped via Roon but can’t be resumed. Zone cannot be transferred, and only one zone can play at a time. Zone selection is by the Victrola app. So there is virtually no integration from the Roon app, which just seems to pass the sound through.
First screenshot is the bottom of the Roon screen showing the Stream turntable playing. Note if you click on the banner nothing happens except for the square which stops playback and the volume control. It won’t expand “full screen.”:
So there are a lot of limitations and RooPlay seems much better integrated. I already owned the turntable so for me this is a bonus, but if you’re starting out you can probably get a lot more turntable for your money using RooPlay
This all very much points in the direction of RRR streaming directly from the source (in this case the turntable) to the endpoint without passing through the Roon server itself with Roon server only being “informed” about the running stream and showing minimal playback status.
So most likely no DSP processing in MUSE for external sources this way. Otherwise I would expect a signal path indicator to be show in the Roon remote app for RRR streams which obviously is not the case.
Edit: I am aware, that the Roon blog post states otherwise (MUSE being able to be used for RRR streams “passing through”).
