Rather disappointing if that is the case (nice if Roon could chip in here and confirm/deny). I have MUSE running on all my endpoints, three of them doing convolution to make them listenable, so it rather undermines a key advantage of Roon architecture.
Hey gang, as promised, the product review for the Victrola Stream Sapphire is live on our blog if you’d like to take a look.
Please note that the review is just that, a review of the turntable. As such, I don’t go into great depth on Roon Ready Relay, using MUSE, etc. I do, however, explain how to play to grouped devices and share why the turntable is cool and fun to use with Roon.
Quite a few of your questions are covered in the Roon Ready Relay announcement I linked in my first post, but I’ll answer them here for easy reference.
Can I play to more than one zone/device at a time? - YES
Where do I start playback? - From the turntable/Victrola app
Does the RRR stream pass through Roon or go directly to the device? - It is passed through Roon to the endpoint as described in the announcement 
I have visions of dashing around the house like someone possessed to lift the tonearm at the end of the side. - Fear not @MalcolmP17! It’s a semi-auto turntable; the motor stops when the needle reaches the run-out groove.
Can we see the signal path when streaming vinyl with Roon? - YES, you can on a tablet and laptop, but not when using Roon Remote on the phone, due to UI limitations.
Can we apply MUSE signal processing to vinyl streaming? - YES!!
4 Likes
What is the delay from needle drop to music playing in seconds?
Compared to rooplay which was iirc around 4-5 seconds when I last managed to try it a year or so ago?
1 Like
Hey @wizardofoz, the buffer delay is adjustable in the Victrola app.
Testing just now by needle dropping directly into the play groove was just under 3 seconds on the Minimum setting, and the maximum delay was about 10 seconds. My WiFi network is fairly snappy if that makes a difference.
2 Likes
I actually don’t mind that. Gives me time to get back to my listening chair before the music starts. 
Depending on how well isolated the turntable is, the delay can result in some faint post-echo during music transitions from very loud to very soft at higher playback levels. I’ve only experienced this once or twice in many hundreds of hours of listening.
1 Like
Exactly, and these were the times for dropping directly into the groove. When dropping on the lead-in I had plenty of time to walk from the turntable and up the stairs to my balcony office and headphone amp without hurrying.
1 Like
Many posters were singing the praises of RooExtend/RooPlay to enable turntable streaming, so I decided to take the plunge. I setup with a Pi4 and a Parasound ZPhono USB phono preamp-A/D converter and my trusty old Yamaha PX3 turntable. Fun to get it setup and working properly, no real issues. Turntable sounds much better than the Victrola (courtesy of Shure V15-V cartridge and the better phono preamp). There’s a little more fussing to start playback compared with the Victrola. Just mentioning as I don’t know whether many people have compared the two approaches. I can’t use the phono preamp with the Victrola as the built-in preamp is not defeatable.
However, for me, the big bonus to using RooExtend was discovering the RHEOS extension, as I have two HEOS compatible receivers. I can run it on the same Raspberry Pi as RooExtend using Roon Extension Manager by the Appgineer, which is an option available on the RooExtend software. Now I can stream to either receiver at up to 192Khz/24 bit without having to use a separate streamer (which means I can control it all from the Roon app without having to power on other equipment with the remote). It lacks a built in display but this was an excellent discovery for me.
Finally, I tried uniting the two systems (Victrola and RooExtend) by using the Victrola turntable to stream directly to my Marantz RHEOS receiver (through the Victrola app, of course). The receiver turns on automatically when I start streaming from the Victrola app and I can control the volume as well. It doesn’t take advantage of the high resolution capability of HEOS but I did it more for fun just to try it. @peter_richardson has done a fantastic job developing RHEOS.
I’m happy to have more options to listen to my music with Roon!
5 Likes
The time delay making digital declicking possible (can be built-in into Muses as plug-in in the future)!