Zones can only be grouped with other zones of the same type, meaning Squeezebox zones cannot be grouped with RAAT zones.
What a pity! Is this going to be changed in a future version?
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I expect that if it could be done technically, it would be done. RAAT zones can be linked I believe.
I became a lifetime subscriber when Squeezebox support was enabled and I don’t regret it for a second!
That said, it is a bit sad that you cannot use many of the new features in 1.3 (DSP, PEQ, Upsampling…) when you group Squeezeboxes.
It is easy enough to ungroup for critical listening but 90% of the time I group a couple of Touches in adjoining rooms.
Not sure what to hope for in future releases but the longer I can keep using the Squeezeboxes the happier I am.
If Squeezebox supported RAAT you’d be ok. That’s the problem.
For me, it’s not Squeezebox, but Airplay. But it’s the same problem, I assume.
Luckily I have Meridian, which is also no RAAT but Roon come from this world. Everything just works and links easily and I am sure the same I true for RAAT devices.
Then I read all the troubles people have with trying to operate legacy devices which Roon have done a brilliant job accommodating at all (including Meridian).
RAAT compliant devices are the way forward as I see it. Just thoughts…
I got interested in Roon because of the squeezebox support. However my two squeezeboxes are now substituted with raspberries with Dac hats running Dietpi that enables RAAT, mainly because of the ability to synchronise - and it works very well. And although I can see that the UX still can be ironed here and there, my wife is very happy with it and don’t what to go back. So if anyone want to buy two squeezebox touch they are for sale 
Maybe it’s possible to semi-group? Give all different types the same playlist and commands under the hood, maybe check every other song if they are still close enough, though that shouldn’t vary that much on gappless playback devices.
it may not be exactly time aligned and demand more resources but it’s probably less confusing and restricting.
It’s a big project. I think it would be fun to get it all working, but it’s not all that clear-cut whether it will happen.
Some technologies could theoretically support this sort of mixing. Others can’t at all because of limitations outside of our control. Others could, but with some contortions involved.
The big question on our part is: if we do this, will it be stable? Will it be a good user experience? Will the synchronization quality actually be good? Will we be able to do effective QA on all of these mixed situations and make it actually useful for people?
Each of these technologies approaches the idea of synchronized playback differently. We’ll be trying to stretch across all of those differing approaches. Not simple stuff to make reliable.
Yeah, I know. It’s a little bit of work to support that. If we see enough demand, it will get done. I think this is the first time it’s come up (of course it’s only been a week ). Not surprised that it came up in a Squeezebox context first.
This is a great solution that works today. For a long time I had an “airplay” speaker with something like this right behind it feeding the S/PDIF input. Worked perfectly and avoided the limitation.
See here: Is there room in Roon for an additional, "looser" synchronization flavor?
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Weird, because I have two Squeezeboxes grouped into a zone, and I can go into DSP settings and set individual DSP for each grouped zone.
You can group Squeezebox but not with other endpoints
DSP Engine is bypassed during grouping with some technologies. You are still able to set it up because it works during single-zone playback.
Thanks Brian.
What exactly are the advantages of RAAT Dietpi’s over Squeezeboxes?
I also got interested in Roon for the Squeezebox support, as the owner of a couple of Duets that was looking for a better interface…
But as far as syncing, I;ve got the two Duets syncing great, and then I got the idea to install Squeezelite on my desktop PC, and that syncs with the Duets as well using Roon or LMS to control
So, what exactly do you gain by using the RAAT Dietpi’s over the Squeezeboxes?
The specific reason for me to shift was that I had three zones I would like to sync, and two squeezeboxes, which synced fine, however giving me some problems with 88k files. I then tried RAAT on two raspberries I had. Furthermore the two squeezeboxes were not all the time in complete sync. I had raspberries lying around, and using RAAT on all of them works so fine. I am not saying that it doesn’t work with squeezeboxes, I just have had an easier life with the other.
Appreciate the input. I’ve been thinking about trying out some RAAT Pi’s myself and was wondering if there were any benefits over Squeezebox that perhaps I was missing…
I don’t know if this trend is at all general, but I’ll note here that I was far more interested in being able to group heterogeneous devices last year, when I had a house full of Slimdevices Transporters and Squeezeboxes plus one lone Meridian streamer - those have gradually been replaced with Roon-native devices, said migration now complete, so I no longer have a personal stake in mixed-protocol groups.
Having said that - it was super-handy to have Roon support my Slimdevices/Logitech gizmos while they were all I had, and I’m sure that inclusiveness with respect to different protocols (Slim, of course, but also Meridian/Sooloos and now Sonos, yes?) is a good way to smooth users’ paths to adopting Roon.
I migrated to Roon-native zone devices partly because I wanted to hit the sweet spot of Roon device support, but also because after some listening I was surprised/pleased to find that a Sonore microRendu (if fed excellent power, particularly as from an LPS-1 ) is an even better-sounding digital audio transport than my revered Padilla-modded Slimdevices Transporter.
[While touching on the subject of sound quality: in some systems the icing on the digital-transport cake can be using the Singxer F-1 USB-to-S/PDIF bridge between microRendu and DAC, in place of a DAC’s own USB input implementation (which might not be as good as the Singxer). And all the stuff I’ve mentioned here is shockingly expensive compared to the prices of other gear in their sonic class.]
All good questions. However, as Roon begins to support more and more non-RAAT endpoints, (Dev, maybe others?) this starts to become more of an issue I think.
My Roon core Server is on a MacMini, streaming to HQPlayer running on a Linux pc which connects through USB to my DAC.
I bought a Bluesound Pulse Flex for my bedroom, working well with the roonserver. I noticed however that I can’t group my HQPlayer output with the bluesound. Is that because they are of a different type?
Well, in the case of HQPlayer, not just not different types, but that Roon does not control the sending of the sound to the endpoints when you use HQPlayer, HQPlayer does. When Roon sends the audio stream to HQPlayer, HQPlayer takes over and uses IT’s transfer protocol to send the music to the endpoint not Roon’s. So, I doubt you could ever do a Group Zone in Roon for HQPlayers.