yep. But there are plenty of networked products on the marketplace that are more robust and operate more consistently.
I understand that Roon is trying to be consistent across a variety of unknown devices, and thatās probably the difficulty. āHardwired is betterā is not a mature product answer, nor is asking an end user to stand up a a complex network. I purchased a pair of Nest mesh routers to help and they simply wouldnāt work with Roon at all (I started a thread on this a few months back).
Where mesh systems are concerned, Iām sure they probably have their own set of issues with regard to setup and configuration. I realise that Roon is about the software and not home networking but some in depth advice on how mesh systems should be configured would not go amiss in the Roon KB articles. It is not an unreasonable expectation for a big name mesh system such as Google Nest to work with everything, including Roon.
Perhaps the details could be contributed by users of the various mesh systems and presented in the KB as āunofficial and untestedā advice?
Then you are the lucky one 
, most replies here seem to agree with me ?
My house is concrete, brick and plaster walls , a perfect combination for absorbing WiFi
I had to hard wire for my CNX before Roon happened
Itās always worth trying a wire just eliminate the WiFi
Each to his own
And their design is almost certainly not so demanding on a network as RAAT is. Two design criteria in RAAT in particular:
Audio devices must own the audio clock. Many other protocols get this wrong, including AirPlay. Itās not possible for two clocks to agree perfectly. Letting the DAC control the pace of streaming removes the need for a clock-drift-compensation mechanism that is bound to increase cost, decrease sound quality, or both.
Tight playback synchronization suitable for multi-room listening. Thereās a careful line to walk here. If we demand ultra-tight (1-10us) sync, it becomes impossible to implement the system on existing/unspecialized/heterogeneous hardware platforms. We shoot to be within 1ms (and under ideal circumstances often much better), which is more than adequate for multi-room listening.
Not really. Endpoints on WiFi isnt that hard to work as I explained above, server on WiFi is another kettle of fish this is the ops issue not WiFi on the pi. Raspberry pis WiFi is perfectly fine and better than a lot of more expensive hardware , looking at you A&K Kann Alpha. WiFi is all about environment and you implement as best suited for this or suffer, none are totally unsurmountable with a bit of foresight and planning just most canāt be bothered and expect things to be plug n play
I think maybe there should be more help when people initially go for Roon, especially if they commit to the Nucleus.
If you are not network savvy and many of us are not then its quite a daunting task if you ask me. I have had Roon for 3 years and to be honest I could not live without it now, but only in the last month or so have I realised that I needed to pay some attention to my set up.
So yes maybe a more comprehensive set up guide.
Start by Reading this.
And as you may have noticed there are a lot of forummembers who are willing to help.
Had this problem for 2 years, and thought I had pinned it down to a networking issue. When I moved into a new apartment with 1000/1000 mbit network and invested in a 3-band mesh network system optimized for Roon, the problem was still there and I gave up. It doesnāt help that iOS app keeps crashing after customers have reported on this issue for years.
I think its condescending to say its just a networking issue the customer needs to sort out and not a problem with Roon code. All other streaming protocols on the same networks were much more stable (Airplay, Chromecast, DLNA, etc). If you can have wired connections everywhere or build your home with Roon in mind, then sure its fine. But for most people this isnāt a realistic solution to fix the stability of Roon streaming. Does Roon really need more bandwidth than streaming 4k video? I think not. For me Roon is form over function and a flawed product. It looks good and has amazing utility, but basic functionality - ie streaming stability - is severely lacking.
What about the (supposed) majority of the quarter millions users that use the same code and experience the most stable multizone music playback system they ever encountered?
Iām one of themā¦
Do you think that Roon should fall back to the same crappy code and protocols that make up Airplay and UPnP? I disagree stronglyā¦
I have a āsimpleā network. I have a Virgin Media 1Gigabit internet connection (UK), feeding into an ASUS RT-AC86U router. I have a Roon Nucleus connected via Cat6 cable to my ASUS router.
I have various Roon endpoints, some wired and some wireless. These include a Linn Klimax DS/3, and a Stack Audio LINK II feeding a Chord M Scaler/TT2, and also an Esoteric K-01X via TOSLINK from the M Scaler.
And the system has never missed a beat. I think most problems encountered by Roon users are due to their network. Get that right, and everything else should fall into place.
With the audio, it is not that bad> But with the video part of the TIDAL it is awful. Most of them are not even starting at all.
I am fighting with roon connectivity for 2 years and still have huge issues. I changed my internet provider to have 300 MBit connection to my House, i i investment in the new mesh wifi network that can handle stable 1200 MBit, i had several network specialist checking network, i have been writing to Roon support several times - and still have issues with Roon stability with roon showing messege either TIDAL is running slowly due to network problem or if I play through NAS - Network is running slowly. I completly agree with some of users that Roon should handle that! I even changed end points to fancy Auralic - the same problem.
If cable connection is the only chance to solve it (i have a large house and it would mean destroying half of it) then lets stop pretending that Roon works on Wifi and lets just say Roon is ONLY cable solution. I have really enough of this and looking now to change Roon for something else. And argument that it works in many wifi setups is not sufficient: it should work in EVERY setup
Absolutely your core machine needs to be on lan cable connection. This is a an important thing to have.
Do a drawing of you rnetwork with Roon core and endpoints and the connectivity of each and we can try to give you some pointers.post hereā¦even a hand done mud map would help. It might also help you visualize better where things are possibly an issue.
Mesh is still wifi no matter how you look at it and itās speed is as you indicated is far from real world user experiences I can promise you that.
The only person āpretendingā that Roon works on WiFi appears to be you!
It is quite clear, from this thread and a multitude of others, that the core requires a wired connection to the network. Wireless endpoints should work fine.
Thatās the point though - Roon really doesnāt work as advertised if you canāt have ethernet connection. I ran Roon core on my MacBook Air M1, which has a stable 450 mbit/s wifi connection in my home office. This is complete overkill in the hardware and network department, but I still had connection issues with Roon. Its only logical to conclude that the problem is with Roon code.
I wish I could make Roon work as I like the utility offered with EQ etc, but the cost and the effort of making it work is just way too high to be worth it for me. And from what I can see from these threads, Iām not alone in having issues with Roon stability.
By āadvertisedā, which advertisement are you referring to? Iād love to see a copyā¦
The fact is, is that Roon have never recommended connecting the core via Wi-Fi. In fact, they have staunchly advocated a wired connection for the core all along.
I get it, you really like Roon and its great that it works out for you, but there are plenty of people having trouble with Roon. Being condescending and indifferent to their problems is not helping anyone. Being vocal about these issues will make Roon a better product in the future. Win/win for you and existing customers.
To answer your question: Roon doesnāt specify that you have to have a wired connection for their product to work as intended which makes you think a fast and stable WIFI would work, but it does not.
Could you specify what you mean by āfast and stable?ā No, aggregate speed is not enough information. You also want to show detailed metrics of delay and packet loss over time, especially in short bursts. A number of current net apps, for example phone photo backups, are able to saturate even a well-configured WiFi network for brief periods, causing other apps to suffer packet losses briefly. That doesnāt matter for most apps, but matters for Roon, because its core premise is synchronized audio delivery to endpoints, which gets interrupted by bursty packet loss.