I have a large but old apartment so I have fibre Internet access but no local Ethernet LAN.
I have installed Devolo Powerline (Ethernet over power cable) boxes but find that the effective throughput from the kitchen, where the fibre arrives and the master bedroom is only 106 mb/s. I can upgrade to the latest generation but my guess is that this will not double throughput - too much crap in the way.
So I am looking for advice on how to configure Roon to make this work as seamlessly as possible. I installed Roon server and became familiar with it but was waiting until RoonReady was ready (I had hoped with Aries Mini) but I have not looked at the potential for multiple servers.
I propose having the master server in the Kitchen with a dedicated USB 3 drive holding the music library. This would connect with Sonicoribter+GeekOut V2 USB DAC for the living room and the dining room.
I propose a MacMini with a dedicated USB 3 drive in the TV room. This would connect with Sonicoribter+GeekOut V2 USB DAC for the TV room and the master bedroom. The other bedrooms have young adults doing their own thing.
***What I am TRYING to avoid is the latency of going to the primary server to stream the data to the secondary zone (TV and master bedroom). This is because I expect that latency and throughput will create lags between the user interface (“Play”) and smooth playback without some local caching or servicing.
I do not know if this is a question of selecting a zone on the interface and Roon server knows that there is a secondary zone with its own data or if I need two full Roon server licenses and the user has to know which to connect to. I hope not the latter as I feel this must be a fairly frequent configuration.
Please guide me on the Roon configuration alternatives and any opinion on the rest of it. Thank you all.
The streaming rate for Redbook CD quality is circa 1.5mbps so even with say 10 zones it only needs around 15mbps … Which still leaves plenty of bandwidth head room.
Just go with one RoonServer and a networked audio endpoint per zone and you’ll be good.
What will you use for the Roon remotes?
PS If you really wanted 2 RoonServers it’s possible but they are totally independent and you would need 2 licenses.
Thank you, Carl.
Yes, I had understood that RoonServers needed full licenses. My overriding goal is to minimise network stress (I understand your calculation but that also assumes there is no other network traffic and no latency issues). I already have a NAS with movies and CDs in the TV room in addition to the identical configuration in the kitchen. These act as local repositories - similar to two RoonServers in effect. I thought that perhaps multiple RoonServers can be used tied to zones. A user interface would then let you select the zone and Roon would direct the server request. What you are saying is that the RoonServer are completely self-contained with no load/request balancing going on.
So, I am not sure what you mean by “Roon remotes”. Absent the Aries Mini, I was looking at the SonicOrbiter SE as a RoonReady endpoint.
I suppose that the best thing to do is to try with one RoonServer and the distributed SonicOrbiters and see how it goes…
Thanks AndyBob.
So a RoonRemote is a RoonServer but not Core?
Do I understand that to mean it is a secondary server, unlicensed and does not manage library or Tidal?
Another way of saying this is that it is a cached server, dependent on the licensed RoonServer?
In my case, would it give me any benefit except to use it as a second user interface? I will use an iPad as the main way of interacting with Roon.
If the RoonRemote does not save on streaming music files from the RoonCore then I do not see a benefit. If it does cache and the RoonCore hands-off streaming responsibilities to a zone to the RoonRemote that serves that zone then it would be exactly what I am looking for.
Peter
RoonServer is Roon without a GUI. It runs as a service (in Windows) and is always a Core since it has no interface which can be used to configure anything (even itself). RoonServer requires at least one Remote (PC, Mac or Tablet) to configure it.
The iOS iPad app is a Roon Remote only. You can use it to configure a Core on a computer, either Roon or RoonServer.
All audio streams in Roon will always go through the Core. As Carl explained, this is not a huge load for a modern computer. Using a Private Zone on a Remote will still have audio going through the Core and then to the Remote.
Audio streams only go to a Remote if the Remote is sending audio to a Private Zone on the Remote. This does not reduce network traffic through the Core. All audio streams go through the Core. I don’t know if a Remote caches the audio stream or not.