Nucleus+ with C4 EA-5 system and stand-alone DAC

[noris]

Hello @simon_bones,

Welcome to the forum!

@simon_bones

I assume I’d then be able to control this (except the volume) through my Control4 touchscreen, using the Roon interface to control the Nucleus to serve up content to the Manhattan and on to the amp and speakers. I think this is right?

Yes, this is correct. You can play music through the Control4 interface to any zone which you can access natively through Roon. If you wish to see the Control4 - Roon interface, you can find screenshots on our module documentation: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Control4

@simon_bones

The second question, which seems more difficult, is how/if I can then use the Nucleus to provide content to my EA-5 controller/C4 audio matrix, and thereby use Roon to control the rest of my house set-up

You can control the HDMI output from the Nucleus and feed it into an AVR, but do note that at this time, it is not possible to set up the HDMI as a connection in Composer. We have an active ticket regarding this and are working on adding this feature. Please see this thread for more info:

Control4 Nucleus HDMI Binding

Hi @andrewo311, Sorry to hear that the beta version of our driver hasn’t resolved this issue for you. As I mentioned, having the HDMI output is something that we’re working on, but we need to schedule some more dev resources towards this, and I’m afraid it won’t be possible to complete a new beta by next week when for you plan to visit your client. Instead, I’m thinking of other possible solutions that we can come up with here. In a similar thread the user mentioned that they were able to set…

What you cannot do is use the HDMI output from the EA-5 controller as a Roon endpoint. Some users have gotten Airplay to work with Control4 processors, but we have not tested using Airplay to EA-5 yet, so your results may vary.

@simon_bones

If Roon nucleus+ integrates with C4 then I assume I can get the C4 touchscreen to ask the Nucleus for content?

Yes, this is correct.

@simon_bones

If I’m listening to Tidal or home network music files through the nucleus or through the EA-5 then isn’t it the same? Or would I need to bypass the EA-5 and have a series of endpoints feeding into the matrix?

If you are using the Roon - Control4 module, then all of the commands will be going to the Nucleus. The Nucleus would first perform any processing/DSP and then pass on the audio stream to the endpoints via RAAT, Roon Ready or other supported Roon protocols (Sonos/Airplay/Linn/ect.). As mentioned above, you cannot use the EA-5 as an audio endpoint except for Airplay.

@simon_bones

My reason for not wanting just to have Roon running the Manhattan set-up, which I’m confident it can do, but rather wanting it for the rest of the system, too, is that the C4 music interface is so utterly terrible that I’m desperate for an alternative.

Do keep in mind that while the Control4 interface might be useful for queuing up tracks and starting playback, it does not offer the full range of features as the native Roon app. Performing metadata edits, enabling DSP or configuring device settings (to name a few features) is only possible in the native Roon app.