I created Roon Core to my PC to try out Roon. I have a portable HD with 14 TB of memory formatted NTSF and have ripped about 10 albums on it via WMP. When I click on Roon everything works great. When I search for Media Devices on my TV it only sees the Router not the PC. When I use my Arcam AVR 850 via NET it sees the PC but shows empty files. Is something setup incorrectly? Will I be able to utilize Roon on a device like Media Player on my TV or AVR?
If I move the HD to my router via USB how can I use Roon from either a TV Media Center or AVR is that possible?
Note: When the drive is connected to the PC I can use Roon ARC on my I-phone with no issues.
So if I read your post right you want to access and/or control Roon using your TV and/or your AVR 850. Short answer, I don’t think so. The Roon core is installed on your PC so you can play music from the PC but I doubt if you’ll be able to set up your TV or your AVR 850 as end points. You need a streamer in between your PC and whatever your using for a DAC, presumably the AVR 850. A streamer can be as simple as a Raspberry PI running Ropieee that is connected to your home network. The RPi will have Roon bridge installed and the Roon core can then send the digital music data to the RPi which in turn transfers the data to your DAC for playback. All of that can be controlled from your PC or your phone or any tablet that can run the Roon remote.
The HD should be attached to the PC where you installed the Roon core.
There are plenty of streamers out there starting with the Wiim Pro which is becoming popular up to much more expensive combo streamer DACs and many in between.
That was excellent. This is new for me so I wasn’t sure how the end point would be. Friends said just get an external HD rip all your music to it or whatever media you like hook it up to your router and you will have access to it with any device that has a built in media server within such as the Arcam or the Sony TV or even my Oppo 203. Yes I can see the songs doing that, but the song library is in a chaos organization thus why I opt to add Roon free trial to see if that would be the way to clean it up and manage via I-Phone, laptop or tablet. Apparently not. I will move the HD back to the PC which to me makes more sense working with Roon. As per the End Point. Does adding a NUC built media server or Roon Nucleus resolve the end point issue to the Arcam which is the prefered connection point to play the music. Or does one still need a streaming hardware source? I presume the Media Server such as a NUC or Nucleus just connects to the network which has all you media on it then one would still need the end point streamer connected to my Arcam. Is that correct?
You should be able to directly connect your Arcam to a Nucleus or NUC/ROCKvia HDMI and stream any music that is stored on the USB hard drive directly connected to the Nucleus or NUC/ROCK to it.
This will be audio only, you wont see the Roon interface on a TV set connected to your Arcam, but you should be able to stream music to the Arcam from the Roon Core using the Roon app on your PC or mobile devices.
This will require that the NUC or Nucleus is located close to the Arcam and that the NUC or Nucleus has a decent (ideally wired) internet connection at that location.
Note: You could do the same with a small PC or MacMini running the Roon Core located close to the Arcam. The advantage of a Nucleus it’s silent and maintenance free. The advantage of a NUC/ROCK is its cheap, relatively quiet and runs the same Roon OS as a Nucleus so again maintenance free compared to a more general purpose OS like Windows or OSX that you may need to login to from time to time to apply updates. Not a long term solution, but you could temporarily move the PC next to the Arcam just to test out how it works
If you don’t want to physically locate a machine running the Core next to your Arcam in order to connect it up via HDMI. Cost, fan noise, visual appearance and lack of wired internet access at that location, are all reason why you might not want to do this.
Then you could just leave the Roon Core on your PC, or buy a used NUC (an old 8th Gen i3 model is fine) to run ROCK and hide it out off sight (sans monitor/keyboard) if you want to free up your PC.
btw. what Roon can’t do is transmit audio to your Arcam via the UPnP/DLNA protocol nor can Roon act as a DLNA server. This protocol was (and in some case still is) used by TV’s and AVR to retrieve audio from a DLNA server running on a NAS or PC. I expect is what your original post is referring to / getting confused by. For various reasons, largely sensible, Roon does not support DLNA and has no plans to.
My suggestion is try Roon on your PC first. You can use headphones or speakers connected to your PC or you can set up your phone or tablet as an endpoint and use headphones from there. Once you’ve tested the Roon interface to see if it suits your needs, then you can consider other ways to get music to your receiver or other places in your home you may want to play music. But get comfortable with Roon first before you consider investing in hardware.
Ok the answer being the Nucleus or NUC will not provide interface directly connected to my Arcam. That being said. I think I will keep Core on my PC with the external drive also connected on my PC and run Core via Remote or ARC which will take care of the UI correct? Then the only device I would need is an end point connected to the Arcam. Do you have any suggestions per bang for buck? Some like the Raspberry Pi DIY streamers or dedicated factory devices like a NODEX or HiFi Rose. Thoughts?
If the PC isn’t located too far from the Arcam and has a HDMI or S/PDIF, you could always try it out with a long HDMI or S/PDIF cable.
In fact if the PC has a half decent sound card you could probably just run a long RCA cable to the Arcam to see how you get on. Although if you do that, bear in mind that it’s the sound card DAC and not your the DAC in your Arcam for the D2A conversion.
Worth seeing how you get on with Roon’s interface and functionality before buying dedicated hardware to use it.
If you get past the initial trial, but don’t want to invest too much right away, might be worth looking for a cheap AirPort Express on eBay (see above) as they can be picked up for around $10 now and work fine as a cheap bridge / endpoint.
Ditto, an old Chromecast Audio although they are harder to come by cheaply.
This is true of any device running the Roon Core, be it a Nucleus or NUC/ROCK. If your PC has a digital S/PDIF or (good) analog outputs you can directly connect your Arcam up that way too.
No, you’ll want to use the standard Roon Remote mobile app to control playback, not the ARC app (which is designed to be used when you’re outside / aways from home).
Any device running the Roon Remote app can also act as an audio endpoint, so you can use the desktop Roon remote / control
app to stream music to a mobile phone running the mobile Roon App and visa-versa, but not sure if that is what you meant.
See my list above.
RPi/Roopie is a popular DIY option,
WIIM Pro is a low cost, commercial option, but awaiting full Roon Ready certification.
BlueSound Node if you want a commercial option that is certified Roon Ready today.
If you’re connecting it to your Arcam digitally via S/PDIF all it is doing is passing a digital signal for the DAC in your Arcam to decode. As long it’s competently designed all digital transports / endpoints that are certified Roon Ready should perform equally well. No need to spend silly money.
If you don’t care about Roon Ready / RAAT and HiRes formats then a used AirPlay Express or Chomecast Audio (for <$50) might be all you need if your looking to keep costs down.
Thank you again Jamie. Your responses have been very helpful. I will check out the available DIY options mentioned but would like a single point device, with great support and Roon Ready and also support all the main streaming services as well. Questions regarding the commercial ones like the NODEX which has a built in DAC. My Arcam AVR 850 has a nice sounding DAC not sure if the Node X sounds better or not. I guess one would have to listen to find out. I see many options to return the Node X if I don’t like it so I may go that route first. If I find the DAC side isn’t worth using, I may return it and go with a simple DIY Streamer for end point that will support Roon.
