Long time Roon-user here. So far I’ve used ROCK combined with NAS, 3 Ropiee’s + different amps + 2 computers & direct coupling from ROCK to an amp. This all gave us 6 different zones (rooms) for music. All worked fine via WiFi and/or LAN.
Now, we are renovating our home and I have new central point for the ROCK + DACs + some multiroom amplifiers in the same cabinet. Wiring to the passive ceiling / wall speakers is from the same cabinet. We have overall 11 different zones for the music, where I want to play same music simultaneously, silent some or select from different sources.
Now, to find amplifiers for this installation seems to be very easy (remember, just background music for this), but the DACs I’m more lost. Should I just build more PI4’s (Ropiee) or is there another good option? How have you worked with your multiroom installations?
If you were thinking of going the RPi DAC8x HAT route you probably want to first double check with Harry (the developer of Ropieee) as to whether the DAC8x can be setup as four individual stereo Roon zones, or if it’s just seen as a single multichannel zone. Obviously the later isn’t what you want. The other option is to setup some virtual sound cards / mappings yourself in whatever OS you like.
In fact if you’re OK with tinkering you could also look at using a more studio focused multi-channel USB DAC. Something like the a Focusrite Scarlett-18i20 which supports 26 channels and is fairly reasonably priced. But to use it you’d need to setup a series of ‘virtual stereo sound cards’ at a lower level than Roon, which were mapped to pairs of individual output channels on the DAC. How you do that would depend on what OS you’re running Roon or Roon Bridge on.
I’ve looked into these in the past - they’ve had a variety of issues, some of which have been discussed on this forum over the past few years. The seem perfect for @Matti_Malkamaki but I recommend research before going this direction.
I have four zones set up with Bluesound Nodes. These are a couple of rooms with ceiling speakers and a couple of outdoor zones. Not critical or primary listening. Just background. The Nodes are connected to an 8-channel NAD amp over RCA cables. The amp is triggered by activity on the zones and is in its version of sleep until something plays.
This all works fine but if I were doing this again, I might just go with Raspberry Pi + DAC hat for each zone. It would be less expensive and work just as well, I think.
I think you might be referring to the CI-580-v2 which indeed had a fair bit of negative feedback. Monitor Audio also produced the same unit as the IMS-4 Music Streamer.
But the link above is to a new NAD CI range that looks better designed, with each module being a single BluOS streamer / amp which are then rack mounted together. My guess is this was to overcome the issues with the CI-580-v2.
Even so, I agree, do your own research before going this (or any) direction.
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Personally, much as I use RPis myself, I’d probably just go with a load of rack mounted WiiM Amps for your ceiling speakers and then just use standalone WiFi speakers and.or your existing RPi for your more traditional HiFi setups.
If you’re buying ten WiiM Amps you can probably negotiate a fairly nice discount and skip the need for any multi-channel amps. Probably neater on the wiring front too.
Not sure if the WiiM amps go into a ‘sleep’ or reduced energy mode when not in use, might be worth investigating that.
My mistake. I assumed you were referring to the CI 720: CI 720 - NAD Electronics. That unit is a combination streamer/DAC/amp. They offer a 3U rack mount that you could mount 6 of them into vertically, though I think each still requires a dedicated power cable.