Pairing Topping DAC in bluetooth on a Roon Bridge

[Fiti]

Roon Core Machine

Roon 2.0 (1311)
Gigabyte GB-BRR5H-4500 on Windows 11

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Core plugged on ethernet 2.5gbps
Raspi on WiFi

Connected Audio Devices

Topping DX3 Pro+ on bluetooth

Number of Tracks in Library

~10k

Description of Issue

Hello, I have just setup a Roon Bridge on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and plugged a Topping DX3 Pro+ DAC via USB on it and had no issue with it.

Now I want to use the bluetooth connection of the Topping so I can move away a bit the Pi0.
I paired them together via the bluetoothctl command on the bridge, everything seems to be OK as the “BT” indicator on the DAC is now fixed and the bridge saying that it is trusted, paired and connected. But I can’t see it on the audio interfaces in the Audio Settings of Roon, the only two I see are the DAC interface via USB and the Pi0 HDMI :

How can I use my Pi bridge so it’s connected to the wifi network (like now) and plays on my DAC through bluetooth?

Thanks

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

Why do want to use BT over a direct connection via USB? I doubt Roon knows it’s got Bluetooth at all. As the Os is likely not reporting it as a separate audio device which it does on Mac and windows. Roon only works with ALSA as far as I know. If you play to the current pi0 in your list of devices the operating system should be routing it out to BT not Roon.

[Fiti]

As explained, I want my Pi0 in a remote location, and sometimes plug my Topping USB to another source.
Also, I would have liked to make any bluetooth speaker a Roon speaker by pairing it to the Pi0 bridge.

I tried the “hdmi” ALSA interface shown in the screenshot when the DAC was paired, but nothing came out from the DAC.

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

I don’t think this is something you will get to work with Dietpi unless it advertises the Bluetooth stack to ALSA. Roon on Linux only uses ALSA for audio. See the below post

Roon on Ubuntu 18.04 bluetooth issue

Hi @Santanu_Sinha, I spoke to the hardware team regarding your case and they have confirmed that only drivers that expose ALSA zones work with Roon. Our Audio on Linux Guide provides some more detail regarding this, but unless the B&W zone exposes an ALSA driver, adding it to Roon will not be possible. Some users managed to get Bluetooth zones working with a 3rd party ASLA integration, but we have not tested this and we cannot endorse it, so if you want to give this a try, it’s at your own ri…

[Menzies-Old]

Hi @Fiti

@Simon_Arnold3 and I are just fellow Roon users here to offer help

A possible solution is a WiiM Pro or Pro Plus (maybe a WiiM Mini).

I was looking to do similar but to AirPlay devices. This didn’t work for me, but Bluetooth was available as an output. I have a WiiM Pro.

So

Roon > WiiM Pro (Roon Ready) > Bluetooth > BT Speakers (maybe, not tested)

The WiiM Pro has coax and optical output so you’d be able to hook it direct to the Topping for use with headphones or the RCA outputs.

YMMV

[Fiti]

Thanks @Simon_Arnold3, I’ll check some ALSA conf tutorials to see if I can make what I need to do.

Thanks @AMT, I’m not planning to add another device to my setup. The point of the Pi0 was to have a small footprint device, which can be powered with a small power bank for a while, at a low cost. I checked those Wiim network players, and they look good though