is it possible to use the nvidia shield as a roon end point for music.
So far I found the app not available in the app store. I was able to get it side loaded onto the shield. however opening it is a pita.
Finally when I tried to configure it in the room remotes it did not have a lot of options and when I attempted to play something to it the output was not great. and the purple icon never lit up.
For that matter is it even possible to play bit perfect on a shield? I tried with my plex and it seem to convert lossless flac from 44.1 to 48. Which my understanding is its not good.
Assuming the Shield is like other Android TV devices, it should be a Google Cast target. Thus, it should show as an “Other” device as “Chromecast Streaming” in Roon’s audio settings. You don’t need the Roon app installed or running on the Shield. It should do up to 24b/48k PCM.
couple of things. Having to side load the app onto the shield. While it started i was not able to use the app at all on the shield.
However it did show up in the roon controller app though the output options seem to be limited. I think it was only showing sample rates of 48 and 16 bits. I would have thought it should have been able to do at lease 96. I will have to get back over to my buddies to re-test this.
Is “casting” still bit perfect?
I always thought it best to have the audio pass-through the best option for music reproduction. Allowing the dac chips in external dac’s or AVR’s to do the work.
Maybe I have a bad taste from windows converting 44.1 to 48 and making thinks sound terrible.
Is the androidtv up conversion to 48 a good thing?
Nope, it is restricted to the generic OS mixer device on Android (without a lot of custom tomfoolery that would vary from device to device). Android (TV) is really not the ideal endpoint for Roon. A Chromecast Audio, if you can find one, sure. But not generic Android.
i guess i dont understand.
i downloaded some test samples of dts-hd files that included a 96khz 7.1 truehd. I played it though kodi installed on the shield and it did the switch and the receiver showed 96khz. So it obviously can do it.
The first step would be to get the Roon app into their App Store. Or even get them to put the device into the Roon Tested program as a unique device. I am pretty sure that once that happened there may be real attempts by the Roon team to take advantage of that device’s capabilities.
Roon uses the standard Android audio path so is limited to 48/24 on all Android devices it doesn’t matter if the shield can take higher or not. Kodi bypass system audio to achieve pass through. Also for hires of two channel you again have to bypass system audio.
If your set up the Shield as a Chromecast endpoint in Roon in settings audio as long as your source is not higher than 48/24 and it’s set to fixed volume and no other audio processing is on the shield then it will be bit perfect .
so there is a way to bypass the standard audio path in androidtv?
i think i had read on here some people using something called usb audio player pro that was doing this on a shield.
i assume this is what kodi and plex are doing.
is the andoid upsampling from 44.1 to 48 a bad thing? (aka to the way windows sucked at doing it prior to exclusive mode)
USB audionolayer has its own audionpath IF you are using It as your playback software. You can’t point things to it. So, it does nothing to help Roon.
I understand. At this point I am trying to determine the limitation of the shield .
I did a few more test tracks and this is what I found out.
Using the kodi app and its tied to my plex server
flac 2 channel 24/96 plays and the receiver shows it playing at 96kHz
flac 2 channel 24/192 plays and the receiver shows it playing at 192
flac 5.1 channel 24/96 plays and the receiver shows 5.1 96Khz
flac 2 channel 16/44.1 plays but the receiver up samples this to 48Khz
i also found some test dts sample files and threw a truehd dts 7.1 24/96 at it and kodi handled it and the receiver showed truehd 7.1 with 96Khz.
Is there a reason why roon has not attempted to build its own audio path for this device? or able to use what kodi is using?
I’m using my Nvidia Shield with Usb Audio Player Pro as a Roon Endpoint using the squeeze2upnp bridge solution,UAPP can run as UPNP renderer. The Nvidia Shield is connected to an iFi Zen Dac and it unfolds MQA correctly. And you can use the same shield as display!
Hello all, and thanks for your question about using the shield pro as an endpoint. I have asked the team for feedback on this item and will reply here with their advice once I hear back from them, thanks!
Hello @Wafubloke, and welcome to the community! It looks like some users have started a feature request for using the NVIDIA Shield Pro here.
Our product team and developers keep a close eye on that category, so that’s definitely the best place to propose a change like this and get feedback from the Community.