Folks:
In my office, I have Roon set up on my laptop (recent MacBook Air (13") to an ifi iDSD to my stereo system and I am running Roon from an iPad Mini 2. Everything works fine - playing DSD and 24/192, etc. My music is on a hard drive attached to the MacBook Air and I’m integrated with Tidal. I have an Aries Mini coming next weekend to stream to my living room. Do I keep everything the way it is and set up the Aries Mini and then look for it in Roon? Or, do I have to hook up the hard disk directly to the Aries Mini in the living room. The former seems more logical but I want to make sure that Roon is sending Hi Res files in Hi Res… Advice is welcome…
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Mike,
The Mini will show up as a Network Zone in Roon but only after Auralic release firmware making it (and it’s big brother) RoonReady. I understand this is currently underway. Mr Wang told me earlier this year that he thought it would take about two months from release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) which was released about a fortnight ago.
Keep your files connected to the Core on your MacBook. I experimented earlier this year with connecting a USB drive to my Aries and although it was snappy with Lightning DS it was a total failure with Roon. That is because the audio stream always goes through the Core, so I was asking my network to stream both ways in real time, which it definitely didn’t like. The same thing would apply to any internal storage on the Mini. I was using N then and am on AC now, but it is still best to keep your files connected to the Core by as wide a pipe as you can.
Andrew:
So close… I will have to play with Lightning DS in the interim and see what I can get it to do. I appreciate your experience and I thank you for sharing it with me.
Mike