I am new to Roon and have just installed a version on my HP Laptop (Windows 10). I am also a subscriber of TIDAL and would like to listen to MASTER quality (Tidal) the best way possible on my Devialet Phantom. I notice that Roon now converts Tidal flac 44.1khz, 24 bit 2 ch, MQA 44.1 khz from 24bit to 16bit and then to Gold Phantom via AirPlay Streaming. Is there any way to keep the 24 bit? and if so how? thank you
Hi @Oswald_Jochum. Welcome to the Roon Community.
Airplay is limited to 16/44, which would be the reason for downsampling here. If you want a higher bitrate you need a different communication format.
Iāve found the best way to get Roon to talk to my Devialet Phantom Silver is via a āRoonBridgeā. Basically, it sits between your core (your HP Laptop) and the Phantom, via ethernet in my case. The RoonBridge ātranslatesā Roonās specific communication protocol (RAAT) to give the Phantom the proper digital stream. You can put one of these together pretty inexpensively in about an hour, based on a Raspberry Pi (RPi)microcomputer board.
Here is what I used. Basically it is a RPi board with another board neatly mated on top. It simply plugs onto the RPi board. This gives a SPDIF signal out which plugs into the Phantom. You control the volume either via Roon, or with the Phantom rotary volume control.
Works great! You get the 24 bit signal sent to the Phantom, no downsampling.
Iām going to move this to the Devialet area where more users might see it. They may have different solutions.
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Just thought I would echo the same sentiment. A Raspberrry Pi is a perfect solution. Iāve connected my Phantom via a Rpi3 with a Hifiberry Digi+ to take advantage of the RAAT streaming protocol. Works great, and eliminates the limitations of Airplay.
The easiest way to do this from a software perspective is https://ropieee.org/. If you feel like tinkering, https://dietpi.com/ is another option.
You could throw money at the problem: the Pi is just a DIY Roon Ready streamer of which there are a large number of options (https://kb.roonlabs.com/Partner_Devices_Matrix) but I think youāll find the majority of users here have opted for the Pi option with great success.
The other reason to potentially hold off on a more expensive fix is that there is talk that someday the Phantoms may gain feature parity with the Devialet Expert range and offer Roon Ready functionality directly, which would mean the Phantom would show up in Roon automatically without the need for an additional bridge like the Pi. Donāt hold your breath on that one; itās a year old rumour and Devialet isnāt known for their agile software development (putting it mildly).
Note the one shortcoming with the Pi solution is you lose volume control in the Roon software. The Pi source into the Phantom is a fixed volume optical input. Volume needs to be adjusted either with the Devialet iOS App, or through the Devialet Physical Volume control. I use the latter with great results:
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Hi there - I have trouble telling whether the 24 bit is going to my Devialet Reactor 600 BUT all lights are purple using a Google Chromecast audio as the Roon endpoint and optical cable from there into the Reactor. Review of the GC as a Roon endpoint was pretty strong https://tinyurl.com/y2e4v36c and it sounds great.
Roon on Mac OS 10.14, Wifi to Chromecast, 3.5mm optical cable to Reactor. Happy to receive tips on how to make it even better but pretty happy and no regrets moving up from AirPlay.
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