Is there an Roon endpoint that supports multichannel?

This forum has saved me so much time (I’m sure I would have pulled my hair out trying to figure out why the Oppo 203 would only play stereo), so I’m happy to help for once. To answer your questions:

  • HDMI is the only output I’m using. I have it connected to an AVM60 pre-pro, and that’s connected to a TV as a monitor so I guess it’s not truly “headless” in that sense. But I can play music through the mini PC without the TV being turned on. Also, I eventually switched to a wireless USB keyboard (I only used a wired keyboard when I first started/confgured because I wasn’t sure if the PC would need to install the wireless adapter before it could be used.) I keep the wireless keyboard turned off unless I have to use it, though, so I can confirm that the PC and Roon continue to work even without an active keyboard.

  • When I am done, I turn off my system and the power gets shut off for the PC. It does make me nervous that I didn’t shut down Windows properly, but so far no problems. And I guess it’s not like the system has documents/data open that I’m worried about losing. A safer option might be to just run it 24x7, though, so it’s something I’m considering. Then the PC would only get turned off/auto-restarted because of a power outage. The power supply uses 24 watts. Not nothing, but lower than a typical desktop PC.

FYI for those interested in a potentially cheaper multichannel endpoint, the Beelink BT3 Pro appears to be another option with 64GB that’s similar to the model I tried. It seems to come with Windows 10 Home instead of Windows 10 Pro, but it looks like it can be found $20-$40 cheaper on some sites outside Amazon. But I don’t have any experience with it or those sites so I can’t say if it will definitely work.

I hope that helps.

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Very helpful, thanks again! :grinning:

FYI, here are a couple other links I found useful when trying to turn a Windows 10 PC into more of a Roon appliance:

(Edit - Added more configuration changes I made to my Roon Bridge PC + removed unnecessary link for auto login <-- Thanks, Geoff!)

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There’s an entry in the Roon KB for auto login…

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hi,
is there a support of multichannel via hdmi for mac mini? I dont wanna mess up with anything related to the windows… thanks.

This post seems to indicate that multichannel via HDMI can work with a Mac Mini:

I would think you’d just need to have Roon Bridge (or Roon Core if the Mac Mini is your main Roon server) installed and running on the Mac Mini.

It seems from other posts in that same thread the Mac might have some limitations related to native DSD (although I imagine Roon would just convert it to PCM instead in that case). I’m not a Mac expert, though, so hopefully someone else can confirm if you don’t already have a Mac Mini to test with.

To rephrase my original question; what is the best way/solution to install roon bride and use it for a multichannel playback via HDMI? What is the most stable hw (ideally some arm/low-cost pc) and software (ideally linux/mac os). Thanks

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When I was researching multichannel endpoints a month or 2 ago, I didn’t stumble across any specific HW/OS recommendations for Roon Bridge. So I’d be interested to hear if the folks at Roon have any official advice for Roon Bridge as well (similar to their NUC HW recommendations.)

The closest info I found during my search was from Roon’s CTO:

This convinced me to give a low power, Atom-based PC a try. From my experience, I can confirm that Roon Bridge is not HW intensive. With it running idle, the CPU utilization was only 2-3%. With multichannel audio, that jumped to about 15-20%. My solution has been stable so far, but it’s only been a month so long-term reliability is still a question for me.

From an OS perspective, it seems problems with multi-channel might be limited to Linux. I’m not sure if that’s limited to the specialized Linux OS’s like RoPiee/DietPi or extends to full Linux installs as well. I don’t remember seeing any reports of issues with multichannel on Mac OS or Windows. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable than me can maybe provide you with a list of current OS’s that are multichannel compatible, though.

I don’t want to make Roon multi-channel set-up sound more difficult than it is, though. You really just need:

  1. An OS that supports multi-channel audio and Roon Bridge (Mac OS and Windows seem to be confirmed, Linux seems to depend on the version)
  2. Stable HW capable of running that OS

What’s “best” will probably be an individual decision based on the products we trust and are most comfortable using. I do kind of wish there was an “off the shelf” Roon Bridge appliance we could just buy from Roon (similar to a Nucleus), though. I know I would have bought one.

Hope this helps.

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hi,
why you havent try https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit instead of Windows?

I didn’t try ROCK because I already had a Roon Core/Server running on a separate machine in a different room, so I was just looking for a simple endpoint that could run Roon Bridge and play multi-channel. The recommended NUC HW for ROCK starts at about $500, which seems like overkill for Roon Bridge so I wanted to explore cheaper options. I initially planned to use a Raspberry Pi (since there are instructions on this forum) until I discovered it didn’t support multichannel :disappointed_relieved:

I assume some of these cheap PCs could be converted to use Linux, but I’m not that tech savvy (plus I didn’t know which versions of Linux support multichannel) so a PC with Windows pre-installed seemed like the right choice for me.

Now that Roon has started making their own HW with the Nucleus, I’m kind of hoping that will eventually expand to endpoints as well so people like us don’t have to try to figure this out on their own :grinning:

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So it would be nice if you Roon guys can advice your customers about hw + os for multichannel endpoint…selling software with mch support and making zero knowledge about endpoint to playback it… Makes zero sense.

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Have you seen the KB article on Multichannel?

yes,
but there is nothing mentioned about specific HW and OS setup or suggestions of HW/SW to playback MCH ideally on some low-power/cost pc.

I’ve sent you a PM…

Just wondering if the hdmi out from your atom pc gives visual of what’s playing over roon. Also, how did you get roon bridge to auto boot. Thanks in advance.
Rick

Unfortunately, Roon Bridge does not have a “Now Playing” visual to my knowledge. I haven’t really investigated this topic before because I normally have the TV off when I listen to Roon and just use a tablet/phone/etc. to see what’s playing. However, I think I found a work-around for you if you need it:

  • Mirror the screen from your Roon remote (phone/tablet) to the mini PC. A quick Google search seemed to find a number of tools that can do this. I tried AirServer since it had a free trial. My mini PC is configured to use “Exclusive Mode”, so as long as I started playing music with Roon first and then mirrored the remote to AirServer it worked fine with Roon Bridge providing HDMI audio and AirServer providing HDMI video. (Note: if you reverse the order with Roon in “Exclusive Mode” then you’ll receive an error message that the device is in use because AirServer already has control of the HDMI audio.) Here are some pictures from my tests:

Now Playing Mirror Display
Windows 7 PC Remote --> Mirror to mini PC (AirServer) --> HDMI --> TV (through AVM 60)

Roon Bridge Audio Path
Note: I tested using 5.1 DSD since I couldn’t monitor the mini PC performance directly while screen mirroring and this is the most resource demanding scenario I found (for my music collection) during previous testing. I didn’t experience any hiccups while playing DSD64 5.1 and mirroring at the same time so it seems an Atom-based PC can handle both tasks simultaneously. (FYI, the reason my signal path is not bit perfect is because my processor does not handle DSD natively and requires a conversion to PCM.)

I’ll answer your 2nd question in my next post.

I’m not sure if you want to know how to auto boot a PC or Roon Bridge so I’ll cover both.

  • Auto-start PC: This is controlled by the PC BIOS. Not all PCs are designed for this feature, so check product descriptions (vendors typically advertise this extra feature) if you want it and are buying a new mini PC. My understanding is that the exact name can vary between different BIOS software, but here are the instructions for my model to give you an idea what to look for in the settings: Auto Power BIOS Setting. After enabling the BIOS, you’ll also want to configure “Auto Login” in Windows. Thanks once again to Geoff for letting me know about these instructions from the Roon KB: Auto Login

  • Auto-start Roon Bridge: Right click on the Roon icon in the system tray after you install/start Roon Bridge (assuming you are using Windows) and select the “Launch at startup?” option as shown here:

I hope this helps.

Thank you very much. You have been a great help.

@nate_c Can you comment on whether this box would work for a multichannel Roon endpoint into an Anthem AV receiver? Like you originally, I am trying to find the least expensive, small fanless device that can take ethernet input streamed from Roon Core and act as a Roon endpoint for sending multichannel audio to my surround system.

Thanks!
-michael

Give it a try. Since it has Windows 10, it might work. Depends on what the HDMI output supports. Most will do 1.3 or better standard and that should cover HDMI. It’s inexpensive, anyway! JCR