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

Hi Peter,

Remember that the KEF LS50 Wireless TOSLINK input is limited to only 96KHz sampling rate. Which may not be a problem for you? The USB is up to 192KHz.

I’m loving Roon too.

Regards,

Zera

@Zerajera , Yes, I think I knew that somewhere in the back of my mind, so downsampling it is :slight_smile: My critical listening is done with headphones. The room for my speaker setup is far from perfect. I am not sure I would notice the difference between native 192/DSD or downsampled to 24/96 on my speakers. When and if the KEFs becomes Roon Ready, they will support maximum 192, but probably only 96.

If KEF does their Roon implementation right then the interface should be via the wired RJ45 port on the speaker. If that is the case then the bandwidth limitation should probably be 192kHz. Guessing (or hoping).

Hi John,

I would also hope that you are right (wishing/hoping too)!

Zera

Hi Peter,

Yes my LS50 wireless speakers are In my study and this is not an ideal room (size/configuration) too, so I also use headphone quite a lot.

Zera

It’s confirmed by KEF, they will be Roon ready.

“Ron Locke from KEF confirmed roon would soon be added which is great news.”

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If this is true I will sell my current hifi setup and buy me a pair of active LS50 and a good sub.

Reading the link the statement by Ron Locke was made during a Kef factory tour, looks very promising, I assume this will be via a fw update rather than a hardware change?

Russ

You have understood where the future is. :grinning:

My equipment is to expensive to be sold, but for a first time buyer, or one with reasonable priced equipment, active speakers is the future. We haven’t seen it all. There may be AES67/AES70 involved as well.
Look at Kii Three. They done the speakers right. The rest is all wrong. Thought fantastic tests.
Still I think RAAT is the right way for now. (I’m sure).

I’m sure a serious buyer will check that out, and get an somehow acceptable answer, which includes patience :grinning:

Happy to wait patiently :innocent:

Russ

I read a lot of people ‘roonify’ their ls50 wireless through microrendu or sonicorbiter into LS50 W’s usb connection. I use however the UPNP brige application on the microrendu / sonicorbiter. In that case there is no USB cable needed. From Roon you can stream directly to the kef ls50 wireless via your network, because ls50 W is an Upnp renderer.

Is there any advantage in going through usb?

I have a microRendu, but not for the LS50w - I have a Pi for that. But do you mean that you have your microRendu set at:

"Mode #3a - DLNA Output - This output utilizes streams from UPNP/DLNA servers and controllers. This output can be configured as an OpenHome renderer. This output supports true gapless playback of PCM, DSD/DoP, and native DSD. "

And that this output stream DSD wireless without hickups?

No, because this would mean you need to have a seperate upnp server running within your network. The rendu is also connected to your network, then picks up that stream and sends it to its usb ports which then is connected to your dac.

You have a pi for your ls50 w. Your pi is probably running roon bridge and is connected by wire (usb, toslink) to the ls50w. The pi acts as a roon endpoint in your network, so you can stream your music from Roon to the pi, which sends the audio stream to the usb/toslink of ls50w.

However, the rendu has a seperate software application called ’ SonoreUPNP bridge’. If you start this app, it sees the ls50 w in your network and makes it avialable in Roon as a zone you can stream audio to. Then you can stream directly from Roon to the ls50w via your network and you don’t need the pi anymore.

The SonoreuPNP bridge application supports PCM up to 192 Khz (so that matches the ls50w perfectly) and supports dsd64 via DOP and dsd128 (converted to pcm)

By the way, I do not use a microrendu or sonicorbiterSE. I have a SonicTransporter that can run run both Roon core AND Sonore UPNP bridge. Saves me a lot of money because I don’t need to buy a Roon server AND an ethernet bridge (like the rendu) and a good USB cable. But if you already have a Roon server and a Microrendu or Sonicorbiter it seems to me you can use the UPNP bridge application on iit if you want to play music from Roon to your ls50w without the need of yet another wire to it :grin:

And lets now wait for the firmware upgrade of our ls50w that makes it a native roon endpoint …:slight_smile:

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Wow, thank you for all this experience. I am a brand new microRendu owner. The problem for me is that I have the microRendu in my headphone setup connected via USB to a Mojo (and soon a Hugo 2 :sunny: ). What I understand about the microRendu is that only one output can be active at the same time, ie I cannot have both USB and UPNP, which would have been more than wonderful to have USB to the Mojo and UPNP to the LS50w.

I tried the bridge mode on mRendu to avoid USB connection but it always sets the speaker in max volume. It’s so scary that I dare not to try again before I figure out how should I setup in Roon. Can you share your settings with me? Thanks.

@R_Lacroix Hmmm… Just checked out the Sonictransporter i5 with 2TB SSD. Seems like a very attractive solution :slight_smile:

Had the same at initial setup. I instantly lowered the volume through roon but lowering volume of ls50w through roon has a few seconds of delay.

In SonicOrbiter:

In Roon:

Roon DSP is disabled for LS50W zone because of its own DSP

Can you expand on “the rest is all wrong”?