Feature request: Linn DS support in Roon [done in 1.5]

[danny (Danny Dulai)]

Can someone from Roon’s staff comment on this message about Bristol Show?

Sure…

Although this doesn’t relate to the Naim announcement, Roon is making some big announcements at the show. The one of most interest to some here is that Roon will now work with Linn DS players.

“now work” should be “soon work”

The DS units are not Roon ready but Roon has written some special kind of bridge software allowing Roon to work with Linns’ implementation of UPnP.

Linn has a platform that is extremely long-lived, and are dedicated to supporting their devices (including ones that go quite far back historically). So together, we decided it would be best for them to come up with a new protocol that would run well on their platform, all the back to devices from years past. This protocol is NOT based on UPnP, nor is it in any way related to UPnP.

This is not unique to Linn as my understanding is Roon also had to write custom software to work with Devialet and Sonos.

While the implementations are radically different for each of these, we have done this before: Meridian, Airplay, Sonos, Devialet AIR, and the KEF LS50W.

Normally we don’t like to do this type of thing, but given Linn’s position in the market and their dedicated customer base, we felt it was worth the effort. Same for the rest of those implementations.

The main difference between the custom implementation and Roon Ready status is the inability to sync multiple rooms with other manufacturers gear. So while you can use Roon across multiple DS units in your house and sync them together, you wouldn’t be able to sync a DS to a Bluesound or Naim streamer, for example. However, you can sync Bluesound, Naim, Chord, Oppo, etc. players together if desired.

Yup.