Roon Team
Love Roon but desperate to know if/when Linn DS streamers will be supported.
Any insight and timeframe for Linn DS RoonSpeaker support? Or Song cast? … Etc
Can you also advise if Linn are working with you for ‘full’ endpoint integration.
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HI, As far as I know Roon are working to provide OpenHome support for the DS (so you can use Songcast) to stream to you DS. Roon have a pile of Linn hardware in their labs and are frantically working to get it finished (There are some issues with some Linn provided code - or so I’ve been lead to believe). In the short term you can use the Linn Airplay support - but you’ll only get CD quality (this is a limit of the Airplay protocol nothing to do with Linn or Roon).
Rik
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Any insight and timeframe for Linn DS RoonSpeaker support? Or Song cast? … Etc
There are no plans for Linn + RoonSpeakers, and it seems unlikely that there will be given that they are so closely connected with OpenHome, which is essentially a competing technology.
We do plan to work with Songcast. We ran into some technical implementation issues, but I’m sure they will get worked out. I don’t have a timeframe, but work on this is underway.
Can you also advise if Linn are working with you for ‘full’ endpoint integration.
If by “full”, you mean Linn’s Playlist mode, it’s not in the roadmap.
Their transport works differently from ours at a fundamental level–Roon is not a simple file manager (like the UPnP servers that Linn’s stuff likes to sit on top of). Roon is a streaming media source that supports decoding, gapless playback, DSP, and so forth internally. We support formats, sources, and features that we could not bring to Linn via playlist mode. Songcast is a better fit for an app like Roon.
Any word yet on getting Songcast working with Linn DS. As much as I like the Roon interface, not being able to integrate with Linn DS is a deal-breaker for me. I just signed up for the 14 day trial thinking that I could send to Linn DS via Songcast but it does not work yet…
I hope you can figure it out soon!
Thanks!
Joel
Not sure why you can’t get this working? I have my SneakyDS hard-wired to my network and have not had any issues streaming to it, using Roon and AirPlay. It’s not the highest quality, as everything gets sampled to 44.1 KHz and dithered to 16 bit. But as a second system and background music it works fine via AirPlay…so not sure why you can get it working?
Yes, I did get it working with Airplay but Songcast does not work. Unfortunately, Airplay cannot handle 24 bit so truncates all of my hi res files to 16 bit.
Cheers,
Joel
As a workaround for now I toggle between Roon and Bubble DS Next app on my Android tablet. I can explore music using Roon (really love the interface and experience of discovering music). When I am streaming TIDAL tracks I just use Roon and AirPlay. If I want to play a hi res file from my NAS I toggle to Bubble DS and play it there. Not perfect but works for now. I would love to see full integration with the Linn DS “Playlist” but doesn’t sound too promising. I guess Songcast would be second best, at least allowing me to send hi res files to my Majik DSM. Nothing is ever perfect… 
Cheers,
Joel
+1 on that! The interface is fantastic but it is painful every time I switch to DS playlist mode on a higheres file - it just sounds soooo much better. Hope the Songcast implementation in Roon will allow 192/24 playback on the DS.
+1 on songcast! 
Love the interface but will only take an subscription with full Linn DS integration. Song cast/Net aux is not cutting it.
How would you suppose that Linn would allow this and if they did I think your request might be better put to them.
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Sorry but i disagree, Roon is offering the service let them sort it out with Linn. I am the paying customer. So iam just stating on which terms i would use the service. Hopefully this will happen some day because i think Roon is fantastic.
Official response from Linn on there forums,
My question on the forum
Will Linn support Roon and implement the SDK???
Response
We would like to support Roon. We’d hoped to do this via Songcast but Roon had problems in their initial attempts at this and have been too busy to go back to it. We’d consider implementing RoonSpeakers but would strongly prefer that Roon publish the specifications for RAAT and allow it to be freely implemented (as Linn have done for Songcast). If the protocol remains private to Roon or is licensed under onerous terms, we’re much less likely to support it.
I can’t find any publicly available RoonReady SDK or RAAT protocol specification so it’s too early for us to consider support yet.
I guess the ball lies at Roon so it seems.
I would appreciate if a Roon representative would respond
Best regards,
Mike
Thank you for the amazing product Roon! I have discovered so much new music since I started using it with Tidal a few months ago.
I too would love to see Linn DS integration with Roon. I will be getting a new Linn DS next year and I am afraid I may have to cancel my Roon subscription??? Roon works great with my Bel Canto DAC now, but Linn Exakt is calling.
If we could get another statement from Roon on the possibility of this happening in 2016, it would be nice.
Hey, I’ve got a really good marketing idea. Lets invent something really clever that nobody else has ever done. Now the best thing to do is to give it away in a freely available package so anyone else can use/steal the whole thing.
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Excellent idea Nick!!! 
Response form Linn on the Topic
I haven’t found any technical information about RoonSpeakers yet. Questions we’d need to answer before committing to an implementation include:
what is the protocol between Roon controller and player?
is it possible to implement on a real-time operating system or have Roon written a client library for linux? (All DS software uses a real-time OS)
how long would it take to implement on a controller?
what are the memory/cpu requirements?
are any royalty payments required?
does it assume use of any third party software? If so, what license(s) is this available under?
does it require certification? If so, how often and how long does the process take? (To confirm support wouldn’t delay the pace we can improve DS firmware.)
Assuming an open protocol that we can implement ourselves and without any onerous licensing terms, we’d seriously consider supporting it. Conversely, if Roon don’t intend to publish their protocol and write some client code themselves, it may be impossible for us to support.
Roon are a relatively small company and are developing their product in many different areas. I don’t know where documentation on the Speakers system comes on their priority list. While we’re waiting for this, your best bet for Roon support in the short term is for Roon to complete their Songcast support.
An Reply from Brain Luczkiewicz (Roon) would be appreciated.
Very interested in Roon and My Klimax system
Thanks Neale