I have HQPlayer running on Mac Mini Roon core in a utility room and I want to play roon on my imac with a DragonFly USB. Will that work over the network? I can’t select the dragonfly from HQPlayer. So while it’s playing, I don’t know where. Thanks
Interesting. What are you hoping to achieve with HQPlayer?
Were I in a similar situation, I would install Roon Bridge on the iMac to which the AudioQuest DragonFly is connected and enable that as an output in Roon. Should sound great, and the configuration is more straightforward.
Hi David,
The Roon Core is in a utility room where cable, switching, synology, etc sit far away from any listening areas. I was hoping I could stream through HQPlayer to a USB DAC, such as DragonFly, for some improved listening - if it is improved. I have another DAC/AMP I’d like to stream to off of a Rpi. Nothing seems easy with Roon and is often far too complicated but hoping this is easier. Thanks! Chris
Compared to HQPlayer, Roon is super simple. Just install Roon Bridge on each computer and Raspberry Pi to which you will connect a DAC. (Don’t connect a DAC to Core). Enable and control all of the zones with Roon Remote on your phone or tablet.
HQPlayer requires you to understand NAA software and configuration plus hooking all of that up to Roon. I’m not convinced the benefits are there, especially for a DAC with few upsampling options (limited to 24-bits, 96 kHz).
IIRC, the SOtM sMS-200 and Sonore microRendu can run NAA software (in addition to Roon Bridge) and may make a nice upgrade path if you are dissatisfied with the sound of your iMac and Raspberry Pi.
Thanks David. Alphabet soup. Guess I’ll stay with Roon SQ. I appreciate your advice.
HQPlayer NAA is pretty simple, not more complex than Roon Bridge. On macOS, you can extract the networkaudiod ZIP somewhere, and then in terminal within that folder run “sudo ./networkaudiod” in terminal. That’s pretty much it and the device should appear in HQPlayer when “Network Audio” backend is selected.
On purpose, networkaudiod doesn’t have any graphical interface, it is very minimal console binary.
Jussi - I don’t know what networkaudiod is but had the client and desktop installed on the mac mini. I think for simplicity and less future work, I’m going to pass on HQPlayer. Roon ends up being a love-hate thing for me. Does some stuff well but not enough to love it forever. I’m sure your software is fine but I want simple solutions for music listening. Thanks for your response and best of luck.
networkaudiod is the NAA software module, equivalent of Roon Bridge.
Desktop is equivalent of Roon Server and Client is equivalent of Roon Remote.
The biggest problem is to use any of these dongle DAC’s with required USB power supply. Of course it is possible to isolate using any of a number of solutions, but is it practical? I doubt it. The DAC will indeed benefit from resampling from HQP, I have no doubt. But there are so many other quality degrading issues coming with these concept in first place. Also systems with One card computers lika Allo and Raspberry Pi. One never seem to by-pass the ever ongoing power supply purity contest for the better sound experience. That is my experience IMHO