I have 7 zones and I’m ok if they all share same source but want to control on off and volume per zone via Roon. Is there such a device?
In a perfect world I’d have one high end streamer….one high end DAC….then multichannel amps to drive the zones…and with Roon I control the single source material and can control each zones output.
Possible?
@David_Rosner1 I believe what you are looking for is Roon’s Grouped Zones feature described here in this FAQ:
Each zone’s volume can be adjusted individually or control all the zones’ volume with a master setting, and you can add/drop zones as needed in the grouping.
Yea but I would need a streamer and DAC per zone still….trying to get to a single streamer DAC for all zones and still control each zone independently
It might help if describe what you have in place already?
If you looking for something to attenuate / mute individual speakers, at speaker levels, post the amp then unfortunately you’re not going to find such a device that works with Roon due to the way Roon’s zones and volume control works.
If you already have a multichannel amp that you want to add multi-zone Roon support to, then something like the NAD CI-580 could work.
A bunch of single unit devices like the WiiM Pro or the Filo SR11 would also work if you’re on a budget, just a lot more cables.
If you’re into DIY then you could investigate using a multichannel DAC hat like the HifiBerry DAC8x HAT with a Raspberry Pi / Roopiee.
If you’re starting afresh the Marantz M4 is a 19" rack mountable 4 x Zone Roon Ready multi-channel amp.
I’m willing to start over but today I have a streamer/dac device per zone and a multizone amp. So I control volume and on/off per zone via the streamer/dac.
I’d like to buy a quality streamer,then a quality dac….then ideally a quality pre amp….then one or more amps for the zones. Ideally Roon controls the single source and I can control each zone volume.
Otherwise I have to buy a streamer and DAC for each zone even though I will play same source In each room. So times 7 thats crazy expensive if I want to put 2-4k into a quality streamer and DAC….
You haven’t mentioned the speakers you have in those 7 zones, nor what multi-room amp or streamers you’re currently using?
Are any of those zones using ceiling speakers? Are those different zones (speakers) all in a single room / open plan space?
Because it’s worth remembering that your speakers and their placement in the room will have a magnitude more impact on sound quality compared to your choice of DAC or streamer, in fact the later should have zero impact if it’s just being used as a RAAT digital transport.
I’m second guessing your setup here, but I expect most Roon users with a similar number of zones still only have one or two main rooms they use for proper listening, the rest being ceiling, patio or single-unit WiFi enabled speakers.
If you want a traditional HIFi setup for your main listening area then get a normal stereo Roon Ready amp or streamer / amp combo for that setup. Stereo recordings will always sound optimal coming from a single pair of speakers positioned in front of you at ear height.
Then leave your current multi-room setup for your other zones or for backfilling your main system when you have a party / guests.
Arguments about the benefit (other than visual) of boutique DACs aside, it makes no sense to spend thousands of dollars on an expensive DAC then route it through a multi channel amp, even if you could get Roon to control the speaker levels of each pair of speaker outputs - which you can’t
If you already have a house wired for ceiling speakers routed back to a central location then the Marantz M4 (4 zones of stereo Roon Ready amplification in a single unit) is a neat and tidy 19” rack mountable way to bring that kind of setup up-to-date, should you wish to do that.
(as a footnote: in theory, you could possibly look to see if there is an multi-channel amp out there which allowed digital volume control of individual pairs of stereo outputs to be controlled via an internet based protocol and then use a 3rd party home automation platform like Control4 or Home Assistant which itself can communicate with that device & Roon to handle the volume adjustments, but you’d still be left with the problem of how to tie that to volume control and the individual zones in Roon. In short, even if you could make it work it would be complex, brittle and prone to failure. It’s just not how Roon was designed to work)
Thank you for the thoughtful response!
I think you’ve nailed it….my multi zones don’t have great audio set…some are ceiling speakers and some bookshelf. They are pretty high end but nothing special. My streamer/dacs are a mix of Arylic UpstreamHD and WiiM amp pros. My multizone is an audio source 8 channel amp (nothing special).
So yes going big with my streamer dac like I have in my listening room (denafrips Pontus with bluesound and tube pre and tube amp and audio physic speakers) probably won’t make a huge difference.
Still bugs me to spend 400 bucks for a streamer and DAC per zone just to control volume. As a fun project I still wonder if I can hack a raspPi end point so that it thinks it’s all zones. Then use that to send a control signal over to a multizone amp that has gain control over rs232. Might be a fun project.
Just learned that room can’t group my AirPlay with my Roon ready devices which really sucks. Another reason for my use case but I think I’ll just redo my system with all Roon ready end points and go native. I like the interface and the music suggestions that much…
If your multi-zone amp can be controlled via the serial port over RS232 or the network and you have the coding skills and patience you could possible get a RPi to act as a pseudo multi-zone RAAT endpoint (by setting up a bunch of fake sinks) which hopefully Roon Bridge would then see as output zones.
You’d then need a process to poll the Roon API to find out when the volume change on any of those outputs and update the amp. Looking at an existing extension like the roon-extension-denon or the Roon HA module might be a good place to start.
The tricker problem I expect will be deciding how this all works in Roon. Do you have one primary zone, that is in effect the real audio output and is always grouped with the other fake pseudo-zones which exist purely for purposes of volume control. Or do you try and do some clever routing on the RPi where you setup multiple virtual sound cards in Pulse Audio (or similar) yet only route the audio from one of them to your DAC/Amp — I think trying to simply combine them will cause problems unless you can be absolutely sure they are all identical and in sync.
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But to be honest, while that might be a fun project to make happen, in practice I expect it will be flaky as hell to use 
Actually if you’re up for messing around with a RPi then this HiFiBerry HAT looks perfect.
It also seems to be supported out of the box by Roopiee. Mount it in a nice 1u rack unit case and connect it up to your multi-room amp and you’ll have a 8 zone Roon Ready muti-room setup with minimal cabling.
Then just keep your main system separate as you have it now, but if you ever want to play music across your whole house, they’ll all be Roon Ready and so can be grouped together.
Wow that is helpful - your Google skills dominate mine!
The Denon extension does exactly what I’m looking for if I choose to go through with this. But better is the HA player which I haven’t come across yet and could be super easy to integrate with my HA system.
Real problem is my wife and others will never use Roon or HA and will use AirPlay so this might all be moot…
I did some work on the HA integration that may help you. The roon API allows you to tell roon to ‘call my code when the user changes the volume on this endpoint’.
I have a multi-zone amplifier that I use for some roon zones. The amplifier has IR remotes to control source and volume.
I added some code to HA that allows you to go to a roon zone - and tell it to send volume + and - messages to HA.
Then in HA you get a callback via automation - and can use any HA commands to implement that volume request.
HA supports IR blasters - so in my case this was the easy bit.
Of course this only works if you can find a way to change the volume from HA.
Details are here in the section “Roon endpoint volume control via Home Assistant”
The logic is used by a few others here.