Hi im Stelio from South Africa. I have a custom installation business with my father. We essentially mainly do High End home theater systems, as well we been working with Speakercraft multi room audio installations, MZC66 and 88. As of late mainly Sonos systems, as they are easy to install, easy to use and generally not a hassle for customers to wrap their heads around.
My question to you is how does this software fit into what we do ? How would it work in a multi-room setups. In a single (Standalone Stereo) system in an office/audio room of someone who considers themselves a Audio/stereophile i can see how the software would benefit them. PC/NAS with music, using the software playing through a DAC into their stereo speaker system. But in a multi-room context ? What hardware do you guys recommend to work, ill use sonos as an example cause they have a complete packaged solution. (Zone players, preamped and amped, âportablesâ with build in speakers/sub, zone bridges/extenders)
I hope im making sense? Id love to better understand what your product actually does and how it will work for me as an installer doing big homes with multiple Zones.
I run Roon on one Intel Nuc as the core. It accesses all my music stored on my NAS (but I could also opt for a larger SSD in the NUC and storing it locally). My other source is my Tidal subscription.
I currently have five end points in my house:
âStereo setâ: My Intel Nuc goes via USB into a dac for my stereo set (my nuc is in a silent Akasa case so sits in the set).
âHome Theaterâ: My Meridian ID40 in my 861v6 serves as an endpoint for this zone.
âStudyâ: my iMac has remote installed as a remote and plays it over its basic build in speakers.
âExtra 1â: my apple TV serves as an endpoint as well.
âExtra 2â: my Meridian MC200 can also serve as an end point.
This I can control at this moment via a âremoteâ Roon install on my imac. In the very near future via an Android tablet, and with a little more patience with my ipad mini.
Where I used to have multiple seperate streaming solutions, each locked into their own ecosystem, I now have one awesome control point of my music, driving zones with multiple technology bases.
Best of all worlds.
Roon is teaming up with several hardware vendors to make them cool hardware end points. I.e. Linn, auralic, dcs & ps audio.
But they are also working on getting an endpoint on something as basic and cheap (and actually very good sounding with a plug on hifi dac card) like a Raspberry Pi.
For your customers it would mean they can have one music collection, and have the freedom to invest in different hardware for different zones, each with their own quality & purpose.
The one issue, is that when it comes to a house with 6+ zones, you cant expect a customer to have different computers and DACs and so on in every room. Which is why atm sonos is so popular. So its exciting that Roon are looking to team up with hardware cause hopefully it will bring a complete solution instead of having to use the software and then try source 2 or 3 different hardware companies to have a system running.
With the Meridian MS200 youâd just need speakers, and with a raspberry pi setup coming up youâd have a very low cost alternative for the same.
But fully agree, weâre waiting for the roonspeakers to become the killer gadget to go with it.
