Hifiberry OS vs Ropieee XL

Audio Gear Talk
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Question: if I’m using a hifiberry appliance with my Pi, what are the benefits of disadvantages of Ropiee XL and Hifiberry OS?

Trying to decide which to use.

thanks.

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Either will work.

Except for a brief period when the Hi Fi Berry OS fixed a bug for my Hi Fi Berry HAT, I’ve preferred Ropieee.

There is very active support here for Ropieee - which I didn’t find Hi Fi Berry matched.

Plus it is much easier if you end up using different HATS - because you can run the same OS.

In both cases roon is providing the bridge software that’s doing most of the audio work.

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Hi Greg - I am using Ropieee too with a JustBioom HAT - Best - Ciaran

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I use Ropieee on a Pi2AES, as well as a number of Pi 4’s and Pi Zero’s. As was mentioned above, simple interoperability (one thing to support), reliability, community, and AirPlay/Spotify when I want it.

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I’m a bit idle and I run both and neither gives me any trouble. The HiFi Berry OS holdout is one of my office endpoints. I keep meaning to upgrade it but it just works so.

I suppose if I was starting from scratch and had to chose it’d be Roopieee.

Edit rereading this “one of my office endpoints” sounds more glamorous than it is. At times I run up to 6 endpoints in there and it’s 8ft by 6ft absolute max…

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Umm, use case? Wow.

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More useless case, it’s where I spend a good chunk of my time so it’s a bit of a playground/lab. I had a mixing deck in here for 8 years and there’s no “home studio” element whatsoever. Anyway here goes currently:

  • workstation Roon on Wine, as easy as anything while working → decent PC sound card but used mostly as remote.
  • HiFiBerry office point, does optical straight to to desktop speakers, easiest “music now” endpoint
  • google mini spy that I still fire up from time to time when I fancy voice control or have a task that needs a VA (rare), Bluetooth to headphones or speakers, we’re currently having a moment
  • 2 X DAPs that are both Roon ready that are wired up to different headphones / speakers while I chose a favorite
  • the iPad that’s clamped to the desk, was once the remote of choice, it has the best wireless of the lot and BT to the speakers sounds fine and is easy

The office is on powerline Ethernet which used to cause more problems than it has in the last 8 months. I get antsy sans music so…

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