I’ve been using the Roon free trial on desktop and am thoroughly enjoying the experience streaming Qobuz. I hopped over to my android phone to use the app with my Zorloo Ztella and noticed that everything was being converted to 48/24.
Upon looking into this, the Android mixer seems to be the culprit. But I noticed that there are apps such as UAPP that are able to bypass this and able to get bit/sample perfect playback.
What I’m thinking is are you boffins over at Roon able to achieve something similar? It would really cement Roon as one of the greatest Android media players paired with your other features.
But perhaps an alternate solution could be to have support for audio streams from Roon to be sent to UAPP which would then bypass the limiting Android DAC.
But I think you might misunderstand something (or I do).
Roon on Android is only the remote app. Roon does not play any sound via the Android mixer. With the remote app you control the server which must be installed somewhere else. There is no Roon server available for Android as far as I know.
I have my roon core setup on desktop and am listening to audio via the app via the DAC. when doing so, any format above 24/48 gets downsampled to fit that bit depth/sample rate.
I read on this forum roon automatically sets the sample rate/bit depth based on what’s reported by the Android OS, which doesn’t take into account the external dac I am routing audio through which is capable of both mqa and 24/192 (though I don’t use mqa), So it defaults to anything above 24/48 being downsampled.
You can enable audio output on Android and play music from there.
Android resamples all output via the mixer to 24/48
What the op is asking for is to bypass the android mixer and support DAC Dongles etc
Seems like a very reasonable request
You can achieve this already to some degree with either RooUPnP or LMS2UPnP and UAPP UPnP renderer. It’s as bit flakey but works , it’s better with Neutron player though. You will not get Roon to support UPnP so this is your only way until they see fit to update their own app to allow bitperfect for devices that avoid the mixer such as DAPs or support for external DACs .
I think a good stop gap measure would be to have the ability to run Roon through the UAPP app, similar to how you can directly run apps such as Qobuz or Tidal through UAPP.
Downside to running Qobuz exclusively through UAPP is that it caps my playlists to 50 songs where I have 3 playlists with 1000 songs each. Gets a bit repetitive… And then Qobuz itself limits playlists to 1000 songs, where I’ve yet to run into the limit for Roon.
Qobuz and Tidal apps dont run through UAPP it uses the API to access the streams like all software does.they build it in to their own software from the ApI. To accept Roon it needs RAAT which they would need to apply for Roon Ready certification to add it. Being a small dev can’t see all the work involved in that from happening. It’s up to UAPP not Roon. Their is an API but it’s not for playing from Roon you need their softasre for that.
I think it’s pretty disappointing that android gets shafted… Roon is such a powerful player and to only have the hi-res mobile playback side functioning properly on apple is very limiting for us android users.
I think it’s only fair that android gets hi-res support via usb dacs as there are people paying the same as apple users, but getting less functionality.
I know it takes more effort because android decided to paint itself into a corner with its hard coded mixer, but it has been shown plenty of times that the limitation can be bypassed through programs such as UAPP and most recently, Tidal.
To have the limitation removed would definitely sell me on a lifetime subscription as Roon fills all my media needs bar the issue mentioned. Enough of my ranting, I just believe we should be given a fair go.
Thanks
I think I will no longer be using roon and will unsubscribe. I believe it to be unfair that I am forced to pay the same rate as others, but limited to only 24/48, especially since this has been reported as an issue for almost 2 years. Perhaps when roon does get it’s act together I will be back, but that could be a while for all I know with roons disregard for android.
Sorry to see you go, but I doubt Roon will ever support bit-perfect playback on Andriod. It’s a design flaw with the O/S (Google’s fault, not Roon Labs’) that takes heroic efforts to get around, as seen with USB Audio Player PRO.
I don’t think anyone would recommend a Roon subscription for someone who only uses Android endpoint devices. For those who care about high-rez playback, the same non-recommendation applies for AirPlay and SONOS.
Before subscribing (or re-subscribing), I’d suggest due diligence to make sure that the devices you want to use are supported in the way you want to use them. I agree that this could be more straightforward with Roon, but the Partners and Help pages are good resources.
The ideal fit for Roon is a subscriber who:
mostly listens to music at home
invests in a dedicated system to run Core on Roon OS (Nucleus or ROCK)
deploys R.A.A.T. endpoints that either natively run Roon Bridge or are certified Roon Ready
subscribes to TIDAL or Qobuz or has thousands of albums in their local library
appreciates the metadata layer that Roon uses to enhance the library
The further one is from this ideal persona, the more likely that a solution other than Roon will be a better fit. There’s no point in forcing it if the fit is not right.
Perhaps this could be solved with an Android build of Roon Bridge. Bypassing the O/S mixer would still have to be done, but it could be compartmentalized in a separate app, thus not complicating Roon Remote. I wonder what the author of USB Audio Player PRO would charge to work on a project like this on a contract basis.
Not forcing downsamplling would be start and have an option to turn it off. On by default for compatibility for phones and tablets. If the app doesnt force resample then on most DAPs that have modified os at least it should pass through untouched like most apps do on them…On my Hiby only apps that force resampling resampling in software do all others pass through natively. They don’t use special versions of apps they are the standard ones off Play Store.
Agreed. Roon is actually doing the downsampling at the core and only sending the downsampled stream to Android devices. As many modern DAPS actually bypass forced SRC at the OS level, simply sending the full bitrate stream (passthrough) might actually work. Also, I believe Android 10 devices now natively support 24/192 both internally and via USB.
