Interesting. Thank you. I’m glad to hear your setup works.
I’m all UniFi as well. I went with IW-HD access points in this house which aren’t great for range, so I have quite a few. Like you, Office to other areas of the house is an access point transition.
My Chord Poly struggles. It’s 2.4GHz only and has a known-lousy WiFi stack. My iBasso does ok with ARC but has issues with Roon. We don’t have to re-hash any of the conversations about RAAT vs. ARC or Roon Ready vs. not. We’re on the same page about that The only thing I don’t know, and may be you do, is whether Roon and/or FiiO worked specifically on the access point roaming scenario when working on FiiO’s Roon Ready certification. I’d like to hope they did.
I’ve done a bit of debugging with the iOS UniFi app’s client roam alerts enabled. The issues I have with various devices are specifically related to roaming - I can see the roam event happen when issues occur. Again…no need to counsel on the root cause - I’m not expecting my non-Roon Ready device to behave like a Roon Ready device.
It’s definitely a good thing to hear how well the M11 Plus is working for you. My next DAP will be Roon Ready without question.
Cheers, looks like a simple reboot fixed the Roon Ready issue lol. Been solid for the last hour or so.
Do you use bluetooth outside the house with your M11 Plus? I go for a walk each lunchtime and normally listen to a podcast with wireless bluetooth headphones using my android phone, thought I’d give it a go with the M11S today but was a bit disappointed to find out that I only got a few hundred yards outside the house and it dropped.
Any idea if the bluetooth is better on the M11 Plus compared to M11S?
Same for BT I think, only the DAC and Amp is different on the plus I think the rest is the same. What do you mean dropped, did you not have your phone on you? BT wont go that far its not designed to. Not used it out of house yet been sick with Covid and I would not use BT any way.
I was wondering if it might be worthwhile upgrading to the M11 Plus as I can get an upgrade for just £40 more if i returned the M11S under the 30 day return. However if you say only the DAC and Amp is different between the two DAP’s it’s probably not worth it for me as the majority of the time I would be using whatever DAP I had with my Mojo 2 anyway.
No idea but roaming is to do with device and the AP and not the client software so I cane see what Roon can do about that. having a larger buffer might help but thats limited to the device I guess. Some devices cling on to an AP and don’t want to roam well, and some don’t support fast roaming so transition isn’t as smooth. I have had to play a round to get my wifi to hand off better, part of the reasoning for retiring one of the APS, but some devices still not great regardless. I have all my AP’s set for fast roaming and bss transition but then this can cause issues with older hardware. My Hiby is not good and gets a slight glitch when roaming.
To make this work, you’d need activate your phone’s hotspot and connect your DAP to it. I’m not sure this makes sense for BT. Roon isn’t going to work outside of your house - you’d have to run ARC on your DAP. I’m not sure any of that makes sense - if you’re going to use BT headphones, your experience is probably going to be equivalent whether they’re connected directory to your phone (running ARC) or to your DAP which is connected to your phone.
Does this mean that you are connecting your M11s to your Mojo 2 via a USB cable? I suspect you know this but you could skip the M11s altogether and just connect your phone directly to the Mojo 2. ARC will give you bit-perfect output when used that way.
This stuff is tough because of the combinatorial issues between network hardware, device hardware, OS capabilities and, sometimes, app issues. Unfortunately, WiFi “standards” are a complicate mess in this area.
One fun UniFi trick is to create a dedicated WiFi network for these mobile Roon devices. Leave client isolation off. Restrict the network to the specific access points that you want your DAP to roam between. If you decommed that one AP specifically because of Roon issues, but you like it for other clients, you could throw it back in the mix but not include it on a DAP-specific network. I actually have six APs but only 4 make sense for Roon. One of the six in an area I walk close to on the way from my office to the rest of the house. My DAP (and my Poly) were jumping to it and then jumping again. My dedicated DAP network doesn’t include it and that helped. Just an idea.
It works fine with my Fiio and phone so I don’t need to change anything really removing the 3rd AP inside helped here as I don’t think it got weak enough signal to make it roam as they overlapped too much, I have a dedicated Roon network all ready as well as 3 others. My only real issue was my Hiby and that wont change its just old wifi tech and is out to pasture now any way because of the M11.
I have to confess how all this stuff hangs together, and what can do what at times sometimes goes right over my head. So are you just bursting my M11S bubble here lol? Does the M11S not bring any more to the party than my Samsung S22 plus does? Is it all about what Roon does and that determines how good the sound quality etc is, and not the DAP or the phone? I would be using the Mojo2 with a USB cable whether using the DAP or the phone.
To get a mobile audio setup working, you need a content source/streamer, a digital to analog converter (DAC), and something to function as a headphone amplifier.
Your Mojo 2 is a capable DAC and headphone amp unless you’re trying to drive very difficult-to-drive headphones, which is probably not the case. As you know, you need something to feed it a data stream.
The M11s you bought is essentially an all-in-one unit that is a source, streamer, and amp. Most people would probably buy it with the intent to connect their headphones directly to it, not to connect it to another portable DAC. It’s capable of being a source for another DAC/Pre-Amp/etc. but the primary intended use is as a self-contained unit.
If you choose to, you can connect your S22 directly to your Mojo 2 with a USB-C to Micro-USB cable. You’d run ARC on your phone and enable the (still beta but working) feature to give you bit-perfect audio out.
What you do is largely a matter of preference. You have options.
Why did you buy a dap at all if your connecting an external DAC to it. The point of a dap is it’s an all in one, has the os to add the streaming apps, it’s built with audio playback as it’s primary purpose and has dedicated DAC and Amps for this. If you have a Mojo 2 and a phone your already there with the exception of Roon not being bit perfect using an Android phone. Arc will be although it’s still in its infancy with lots of issues. The DAC in the M11S is good wether the mojo is better only you can make that option as you have both. But to use it with the DAP seems overkill when you will get similar experience with a phone attached but they are susceptible to interference. It’s why I ditched my phone and went for a dap, they work and do what they do extremely well whilst my phone is free to do what it does extremely well.
Thanks to you both for explaining and clarifying the things I didn’t fully understand.
As you both say I guess it may be overkill having a DAP and using it with an external DAC, although in my defence I already had the Mojo 2! I usually spend an hour or two last thing at night with headphones on listening to music(normally Roon), headphones connected to Mojo 2 which is connected to my phone via USB. Recently I guess I quite liked the idea of having a dedicated player such as a DAP, which also meant I could just zone out from the phone and leave it in another room out of the way lol, so I sprung for the M11S.
I guess it might be shiny new toy syndrome, but listening to the M11S today in Roon Ready mode hooked up to the Mojo 2 I thought it sounded absolutely terrific. I’m not saying it was night and day and in a different league from using my phone but it was a pleasurable experience. I guess what I can do is play about with the setup, alternating between M11S and phone and if I decide it’s not worth keeping I can always return the M11S within 30 days to Amazon.
Try the M11 without the Mojo and see how it feels as this is the advantage of the dap nothing else needs connecting. If that sounds worse than Mojo and phone then go with the latter and send it back. If it’s even Stevens or better then choose what’s the most practical if money isn’t an issue, to me this is the most important thing as it’s just nice to not have to have a great big DAC attached to a phone but that’s just me and connecting one to a DAP where all the cost that’s in it was for its inbuilt DAC and Headamp just seems counterintuitive.
OK, that was interesting and very instructive. Spent about an hour there playing about with all the configurations and found the following.
While still sounding extremely good, I reckon the M11S on it’s own was not as good as either the phone or M11S in combination with the Mojo 2.
It’s not the most scientific way of comparing things, but I reckon connecting the Mojo 2 to the M11S added 10-15%. Again, it might be shiny new toy syndrome but I reckon the M11S with the Mojo 2 was a bit better than the phone with the Mojo 2.
Regarding your point on whether money is an issue, I’m not exactly rolling in cash but at the moment I can afford to take the hit on the cost of the M11S.
I do get what you are saying about the Mojo 2 DAC being an additional (and clunky) component whether attached to the M11S or phone, but as I say the primary use will be late at night spending an hour or two sitting in the living room chair so it’s not as if I’m lugging it all about with me in my pockets while on the train or out for a walk. And I keep coming back to the fact I can ditch the phone for a couple of hours and just forget about it which is an added bonus.
I’m still a bit torn about whether to return the M11S, at the moment it’s probably 60-40 keep.
I’m sincerely happy that you understand all of this now!
The Mojo 2 is a fantastic DAC/headphone amp and it doesn’t surprise me that you were able to hear a difference between it and your M11s. You may find that you like the M11s for some things and the Mojo 2 for others. Nobody here is going to judge you if you keep both
The only thing I don’t know, and may be you do, is whether Roon and/or FiiO worked specifically on the access point roaming scenario when working on FiiO’s Roon Ready certification. I’d like to hope they did.