I have a Weiss DAC501 that I use as my streamer/source in Roon. It is connected to my Hifi system preamp, which then ultimately drives my passive speakers. I also have a multi-room Sonos system. Roon is not allowing me to “group” the Weiss DAC with the sonos speakers because they are a different “type”. I use the sonos speakers with Roon via the Sonos streaming protocol. But I have used them as Airplay and they are still not allowed to be grouped with my Weiss DAC. I need a solution to be able to group either these Sonos speakers, or some Bluesound speakers, to my Weiss DAC. Will Bluesound speakers be able to be grouped with my DAC? Any help in getting this grouping accomplished would be appreciated.
Others will chip in here, I’m sure, but if you’re not too bothered about sound quality when grouped, then the cheapest/easiest option might be to add an Airplay streamer to the DAC501. Something like the Wiim Mini should suffice?
BTW, how do you like your DAC501? It seems to be a seriously impressive bit of kit but I don’t see it mentioned much on the forum.
I dunno if Airplay would group with 501? 501 might use RAAT bluesound speakers are Roon Ready so again might use RAAT. In that case you could group them. But do check as I’m not yet sure that all Roon Ready have to use RAAT
I second to the question about 501.
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Indeed - that’s why I suggested adding a streamer with Airplay - it’s a lot cheaper than replacing all the speakers, assuming Sonos behaves itself with Airplay.
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Thanks for the info. I’ve had the Weiss for about 9 months and have no complaints. I have not even been able to use the Room EQ on it yet, but I plan to do so. I’d recommend it for sure. When you say add a Wiim, could you explain a little more how that would go in my signal chain?
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Sure - to the best of my knowledge, the DAC501 has an optical S/PDIF input and the Wiim Mini an optical S/PDIF output. So, you’d connect the latter to the former, enable the Wiim Mini as an airplay device in Roon, and stream to it. This signal in turn would feed your DAC. When you want to group devices, you group with the Wiim Mini. At other times, you stream directly to the 501 as a Roon Ready endpoint.
OK….i don’t know enough about DAC’s to know how that might affect signal rate, or sound quality? Thanks for your help.
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Maybe you can use a Bluesound Powernode? You stream from roon to group (501 and Powernode) and Powernode is streaming to your Sonos (in one quick search it was unclear to me if this setup would work). Maybe others know.
Well, your DAC501 will be limited to the lowest common denominator, i.e. Airplay limitations, which I thought was 16/44 although this post expands a little wrt Sonos. Either way, this probably isn’t an issue for whole house listening…
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Ya I’m trying to figure out how having the wiim upstream from my Weiss will limit what the Weiss has to work with, in terms of bitrate and also what the DAC in the wiim will have done to the signal before it reaches the Weiss. The Weiss as you know was not cheap. And i want to get the most out of it to my hifi preamp.
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It might be just talk as grouping wifi devices with cable (lan or usb) might end up with delays.
I’m not pretty sure about airplay quality. From my understanding 44.1/16 is ok. But also from my understanding the sending device can do some compression based on the receiver point connection. From what I’ve read long ago this is exactly opposite from RAAT that sends the selected quality (processed or not depending on your roon dsp settings) and the receiver point does all the rest. That would not be reliable for Airplay that relies on WiFi
Before I have found roon for my main sistem I was set on Yamaha musiccast. All on ethernet cable. But Yamaha and roon only work on airplay. Gladly sold one and with the other 2 I use some old laptops with ubuntu running roon bridge.
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Just to be clear (in case it isn’t), the only limitation would be when streaming via Airplay for whole house listening…your normal use of playing direct to the 501 via RAAT would be unaffected…
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In that scenario a bit expensive but more reliable solution would be to get another Sonos next to Weiss. When background use the Sonos. When normal use use RAAT to 501
I’m not a Sonos person, so can’t speak for how well it works (or doesn’t), but a further option would be to swap the Wiim Mini for a Sonos Port and take the digital out from that. I guess this could be more reliable with other Sonos kit, although I’d be surprised if it sounded any better than the Wiim Mini by the time it has gone through the 501.
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