"Now Playing" display on RoonReady audio endpoints?

Is Roon and the associated RAAT protocol allow “easily” to audio manufacturers to present “Now playing” informations (title, artist, album cover) on “Roon Ready” enpoints devices with a LCD display ?

I’m currently using a SqueezeBox Touch with Roon and i like album and title information presentation on the display.

However from a SQ point of view i think there is best devices than SBT and i would like to upgrade without losing the convenient “Now Playing display”. AURALIC, BRYSTON, EXASOUND, PSAUDIO offers such good devices with display.

Regards.

No info on this point ?

Does this answer your question?

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/whats-the-difference-raat-vs-airplay/6891/5

Thank you @philr
I’m very interested in Brian post, and waiting to see how manufacturers will deal with command and control integration on “RoonReady” devices with LCD display ( Bryston, PS Audio, Auralic …)

Barring some sort of impossible technical/hardware limitation, devices that do this sort of metadata display for other playback methods must do the same for Roon. This is a certification requirement.

Thank you Brian.
I hope Bryston BDP-2 will be certified as RoonReady endpoint soon.
Better with “Now playing” meta on the front panel display and great if transport “hard buttons” (play, pause, next …) will also work. :smile:

Yes, RAAT supports buttons, too.

Excellent !

IMHO depending where located some headless endpoints are OK but in my living room better to have audio endpoint with “now playing” and buttons. User Experience is not only on computer or tablet displays.

Brian: I really hope this is true of the Directstream, which I understand should be finally RoonReady within a week (according to Paul McGowan). I believe I heard at one point over there (PS Audio Forum) that album art would not display with Roon, which would really be a less than satisfactory implementation of Roon. Album art displays on DS DAC with the current Bridge II; I would hope it can do so when it is RoonReady.

Can’t wait!

The PS Audio devices are some of the most fully integrated products we have worked on so far.

Early last year, when we were barely a company, and we were begging manufacturers for audio hardware samples so we could finalize our USB and DSD playback engines with a wider variety of gear, the first box to show up on my doorstep was a PS Audio DirectStream. These guys have been with us since the beginning, and we are incredibly happy that they’re releasing their Roon Ready firmware updates soon.

Since Paul has announced that this is coming, I’ll share a little teaser…

Artwork + transport buttons should work as expected:

Volume/mute controls between Roon + DAC are fully synchronized:

If the DAC is in standby, or has a different source selected, and you start playing in Roon, it wakes up and/or switches to the BridgeII source before starting playback.

If you turn off the DAC or switch sources on the front panel during Roon playback, the Roon automatically pauses the music and displays an appropriate message:


You can also switch the DAC into or out of standby mode from the Roon UI:

One last thing: as with everything in life, 1.0 versions sometimes have a few kinks that only show up once products are out there in the world–so go easy on these guys if you run into one! PS Audio have done a great job executing the Roon Ready vision, and we are really excited to have these products out there.

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Brian: You just made my day! Way more integrated than I was expecting! I will go easy on everyone, knowing you are working together to make this the best user experience possible. Converting to lifetime subscription as soon as this is out. And you can tell my old friend Mike Fass that! He and I discussed Roon before the announcement as part of his “research”

Good times ahead.

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Great news, Brian!
Just one question. Will this approach allows for an integration with HQ Player as well? Or is it an exclusive marriage only for the DS with Bridge II and Roon?

Just got home from vacation and updated Roon and my DS DAC Bridge II to the latest versions. Now Playing is working beautifully as is the Roon integration.

I was even amazed to see that the images I added for my internet radio stations are displaying on the DS display. Didn’t expect that!

Edit: I spoke too soon. The first Internet station I chose displayed properly, but all blanks after that. Too bad. Thought we had something there!

Cover art display on the Directstream DAC seems to be hit or miss. It works for a while as songs switch in Radio mode, then it will stick on one album. If I hit pause on the Direcstream DAC display and they press play, it will refresh the cover art to the correct album. Seems that there needs to be a software update on the DS side at some point.

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I know Dennis has educated us on why this is the case, and it’s just going to be the way it is for the current hardware from PS Audio. However, just to back up what others have noticed, it appears that when playing radio whenever the format changes, the artwork seems to update. Same format for next song, rarely if ever does it change. Wondering if there is a potential fix for just that aspect of the album art issue. I still agree that to ensure peak performance we can’t keep resending the art to the display, but maybe this is a minor fix to consider.

This issue should be fixed in the Huron release. I found the root cause of the issue.

Dennis

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