Optimum Setup for Roon and Denon AVR

[Austar]

QNAP TS-473 running Roon 1.7 (build 528)

ASUS RT-AX88U Router

Denon X4300H AVR configured as 9.1 running HEOS.

Streaming QOBUZ and Tidal and local FLAC files.

I just want to check which of the various configurations for running Roon would be the best?

1. Using the HEOS app via Airplay or
2. Connecting the NAS (running Roon) to the Denon AVR using HDMI
   …or maybe others?

Intuitively, I would think the second would give the best quality, but would welcome confirmation.

Thanks,
Steve

[Geoff_Coupe]

You could try connecting the Denon via HDMI to give support for 5.1 multichannel - that works for a Nucleus or a NUC running ROCK, but I’m not sure whether it would work with a QNAP.

There’s a long thread about connecting via HDMI here.

HDMI output for multi-channel work with Denon AVR?

I was intrigued by the description of the HDMI port on the Nucleus as “This port can be used as a multi-channel audio output”. My Denon X3400H AVR only supports proper play back of multi-channel audio files when they come in through one of it’s HDMI ports. Can anyone tell me if the Denon AVR would be able to play these types of files from the Nucleus via HDMI.?

[Rugby (aka Daniel or Big Dan)]

@Geoff_Coupe

or a NUC running

Or a NUC running Windows…

[Geoff_Coupe]

Very true - I did that, before defecting to running ROCK…

[SKBubba]

Does the qnap have usb out playback? If so, you could get a usb-> s/pdif converter and run it to the optical or coax digital input on your denon.

I use a Topping D10 (less than $100) for exactly this purpose (denon x3300w). It can also be used as a dac for playing dsd files. (I don’t use it for this, but tested it to see if it works and it does.) With the D10 connected via toslink I can play any files up to 96k via wasapi (don’t know if qnap has something similar) without any resampling/downsampling like you get with airplay. For files > 96k you have to install a topping asio driver. Don’t know if you can do that on qnap.

Also don’t know if any of this works for multi-channel. Probably not.

I started out using hdmi, which sounded great and supports any resolution (but not dsd). I switched to toslink via d10 because denon handshaking problems (related to source switching or zone 2, not sure) kept resetting the hdmi port to 16/48 only.

[Austar]

Thanks for that - I hadn’t though about a toslink option, but will give it a try!