KEF LS50 wireless - roon ready? [not roon ready, but supported natively]

Awesome news!

Yup. Doesn’t even require an update to the Kefs :slight_smile:
Looks like I have a SonicOrbiter and an AlloUSBridge for sale now :slight_smile:

ha, thanks for sharing!

Almost one year after I’ve started this thread the question mark in the title can finally be exchanged with an exclamation mark, I guess. Very nice!

If true this is amazing news.

This is somewhat confusing to me. For example which input will need to be enabled for Roon to work? Wireless? There is no input for Ethernet. A hard wired ethernet connection would be my preferred method to connect via Roon. The LS50W has an ethernet connection but no way to enable it via the input switcher. I sure would like to understand how this will work and more importantly when. Goodbye ultraRendu.

I don’t know why it wouldn’t be true…
As far as ethernet I have always assumed that because it is ethernet and always connected you would not have to switch to it but it would take priority over any other ports. But don’t know for sure. Wireless you would have to switch to I think.

would you guys call the way the KEFs are setup in the darko article stand mount or desk? it’s a credenza, so like a desk, but not nearfield like desk use would be typically.

I can’t comment on anything else at all about this, but I just wanted to explain this one LS50W UI thing:

The wifi and hard wired ethernet connection are both on the “wifi” setting for the input switcher thing.

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Is that true? How do you know that?

Wait I just noticed that you are a Roon Labs Developer. So I guess you do know. That’s cool. I knew that there had to be a way to select the input and it was just not automatic as was suggested above.

Because @ben wrote our KEF implementation :wink:

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Cool. So when will we see this?

In the Darko article it says, “Within the next few weeks….”

I suspect it will be whenever the next Roon update is ready.

Good to know and a little disappointing. Too bad the Kef’s don’t auto switch.
I’m using the optical for TV so will have to with for Roon.
But not the end of the world and eliminates the need for a device attached to the USB port.
I assume sound quality via ethernet would be quite good and I’ll use that over wifi.

Most devices don’t need to switch to use either ethernet or wifi and I said I don’t know for sure.
Ethernet and wifi must be on the same “bus” or whatever Kef uses for network internally.
I’m guessing they can’t implement auto-switching on the current hardware but who knows other than Kef. Nice to not have to update the Kef firmware for this too.
On July 22nd in this thread Danny Dulai said this was coming but might not be full RAAT streaming. I guess we will see what it does and doesn’t do when it is available.

A software update required for Roon but no software update required for the LS50 Wireless could mean no RAAT. Rather, that sounds more like a compatibility workaround in Roon – a la Squeezebox and Devialet AIR. What compromises, if any, are being made from a standard RAAT implementaiton in order to enable Roon-KEF integration would be interesting feedback from the Roon team.

AJ

I had actually hoped to get an answer from someone that knows. I can guess “it’s in the next update” too.

The Roon guys have a policy of not talking about release dates for Roon updates.

DarKo says within the next few weeks and he probably has a reason for saying that. Maybe they will be showing it at CEDIA here in San Diego this week.
It sounds like he says it will not work multi-room with another set of Kefs which would be too bad. I assume you would need to use another connection method to get multi-room then.
I wonder if they could be using the Kef’s UPNP functionality somehow. The Roon people didn’t seem too big on that idea when I asked about in July.

I am looking forward to the roll out of the support for the LS50w in ROON… :slight_smile:

He clearly does know something – to be more specific, he knows our policy on talking about release dates, which has been stated over and over on this site. It will be released when it’s ready, and not a minute sooner.

I’m also puzzled by the tone here, particularly when there are multiple people here trying to give you good information, both from the Roon team and from the community in general.

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