I just bought an Onkyo DP-X1A and it got me thinking…
DPAs can sound great! Onkyo, Pioneer, Astell & Kern, Sony, etc. They sound great…but…the software is so-so. I have Roon all over my house with the core running on a NAS and end points in almost every room. But on the road, when I travel, I need a DAP to get my hi-fi fix.
What if there was a version of Roon that worked as a core on these DAPs? Get all the features of the beautiful interface, integration with TIDAL and Qobuz, lyrics, concert dates. Most of these DAP lay over Android. Yuck! This would be soooo cool! Expand that universe!
It’s a great idea but they don’t have the grunt to run the core. I can’t see them creating separate branch with fewer features as the use cases will be significantly less than full blown Roon.
I’m not sure it needs to be Roon as it is implemented currently for home use. It would not need to distrubte music from a central core. For a DAP, you’re either streaming through wi-fi TIDAL, or the music files are on a local SD card. What it would be is just the look and feel of Roon.
There is already some cross-functionality. When I download to the DAP a TIDAL album for playing off-line, that album gets added to my Roon Library at home. Somehow TIDAL knows I like this album and adds it across the platform. I’m sure more can be done.
For people on the go who’d love to keep their music world all synced and easily accessed where ever they are, this would be a huge next step in the progression of Roon.
Now I’ve learned that when I create a TIDAL Playlist on the Onkyo DP-X1A, That playlist ends up on Roon at home. But it does not work the other way around. The possiblities here are tremendous. I have 400GB of FLAC files on my NAS, and I make an exact copy of those files and put them on a mirco SD card and insert it on my DP-X1A. Since it is all playing locally on the DAP, what Roon needs to be on the DAP is an app that mimicks the look and feel of the real Roon, and syncs playlists and other settings. This would be HUGE!