Excellent post there! Roon isn’t evereything for everyone, but it’s very easy to take for granted when having used it for a while. And to me and many more, nothing else compares.
And feel free to ignore “the chatty bunch” here, they are very friendly, but easily derailed… Particularly on a saturday night!
No problem!
I like a little bit of metal, hard rock etc. A good band is ‘Pain’, songs like ‘shut your mouth’, or the cover of ‘Elenor Rigby’ are very good. Although, I’m more to the style of Evanescence. Other than that It’s more 90’s (Kisstory) & 80’s for me. But my music ranges from Classical to Dubstep, Trance, EDM, Grime, etc.
I find that the thumbs up/down after the fact helps over time. At first the suggested music was meh at best. Recently though, the music has been spot on! Welcome and have a great time.
Yesterday I came across another YouTube video (as you do) that showed that the Airport Express got a firmware update, and this update included Airplay 2. When I saw the guy connecting his stereo via AirPlay to play his phone, I thought I should be able to do this via Roon also.
So, I hunted around for another old Apple product that’s been stored away and connected it all up and updated the firmware. I also just realised that this also has MiniToslink (Optical) out. With everything connected up, and Roon enabling the AirPort Express, I sent some music to it by using the a 3.5mm jack connection. But, nothing happened… So scratching my head all last night and sleeping on it, I decided to have a search around and do some testing.
Got my phone, tablet etc and Airplayed some music and bingo, I had music! Completely baffled as to why it wasn’t working on Roon, I reset the Airport Express multiple times to no avail. I then happened to stumble across a few posts on here that said about the compatibility of Airplay 2. Well, knowing that the legacy version works from Roon (and, not being bothered about Airplay 2) I just assumed it worked. However, Apple being Apple only supports Airplay 2 in house and not on anything else (as the SENDER). A couple of hours later I came across yet another post about downgrading Airport Express back to 7.6.9. And, Bingo! I now finally have sound coming out by using a 3.5mm jack connection.
So for anyone that happens to come across this post, select the 7.6.9 firmware to default back to the original AirPlay.
Note: I was doing all this just to test some random speakers. I have some Bose Companion 5’s on my desk that obviously don’t work unless connected via USB on my Mac. But, using an AirPort Express I can connect them both using a 3.5mm jack. This is due to the control pod having a 3.5mm jack input.
Well, it’s been a couple of months in and, I’ve been loving it!
The Optiplex 7010 didn’t last long, and this was soon replaced with the newer Optiplex 5030 SFF. This model is a nice upgraded due to the nvme and the Intel processor. So, the current system is; I5 6500, 16GB ram, 128GB nvme. This is more than enough power for what I use. The actual machine was only £49 ($60 roughly), and was an ex-business machine that was being sold off in a job lot.
Rock was installed within minutes and I pointed the core to my library and I was back up and running in 10 minutes over all. It’s now hidden out the way in the porch so I cannot hear it or see it. Bliss.