Play-Fi and Roon [not on roadmap]

I owned Play-Fi speakers before I started using Roon and needed to make them work together in order to really justify the cost of building a Roon core system.

I now use Roon to send the output to the Play-Fi device and it does a good job as a whole house system. While, I have had good luck making the two inter-operate, it is not always reliable or simple as I would like it to be.

I think better integration would be good for both Roon and Play-Fi users as it gives us the freedom to send what we want to our sound systems w/out Play-Fi trying to make those choices for us and does not improve on the quality of the sound source as does Roon.

Is Play-Fi support on the Roon roadmap anywhere?

Thanks,

We talked to them last year at CEDIA, and their pricing model is not in alignment with our business model. There was a long and friendly discussion, but their bizdev team felt that we weren’t a good fit for them.

How did you get Play-Fi speakers to work. I have a pair and I do not care if it is a kludge I would still like them to work with Roon

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Thanks Danny. Too bad - it still works though:-)…

-Steve

Hi Ricardo,

Pretty straightforward. Start roon server/ roon on your core machine, Play-fi software should be installed on that machine as well.

Next, set up your Play-Fi devices - grouping them however you want them to work, you can also do this from your remote using the play-Fi client ( I use an iPhone and iPad - iPad works best as you can set the DSP options if you have one). Keep the volume low, around 25% works good for me.

Next, go to your remote and start roon. Clcik on change zones and you should see something like

Select Play-Fi zone as shown and then select your music.

Play it!

-Steve.

Yah, but it requires a Mac/PC – which Roon does not if you use Linux/ROCK/Nucleus/third-party-Core

That requirement was the limitation we were trying to lift by talking to Play-Fi.

Point taken - I’ll complain whenever I get the opportunity…

Thanks Steve
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Hi Steve,

Was something more to getting a Play-Fi device to act as an endpoint? I have a Paradigm PW-Link, with the Play-Fi app loaded on a PC with Roon remote. I can see the Play-Fi device in the Roon zone selection, but can’t play to it. It appears to be playing, but no sound. It does work if I play something to it from the Play-Fi app. Does the Play-Fi app need to be on the actual Core itself?

Hi Daniel,

No. Its that simple. I just upgraded a few days ago to the new play-fi app on IOS. The version is 4.60.180430 (Klipsch) and it is not working anymore either. Additionally, Windows 10 was upgraded to 1803 - a significant upgrade.

So it looks like time to start debugging - unfortunately all of my windows machines are upgraded.
Contacting the manufacturer, Klipsch in my case, is my next step.

I will get back if I find anything - I won’t be able to start until the weekend.

-Steve

Thanks for the reply Steve. I was trying to sell my Play-Fi device until i saw your post on it working with Roon. It’s only a zone in a continuing whole house audio effort, so another Raspberry Pi with DAC HAT would do just fine with minimal cost.

I can not locate a Mac OS play-fi app. There is one for PC though.

@Daniel and others who might be interested.

The Play-Fi was upgraded ~2 days ago and now it works with as before; i.e., using my instructions above. I am using Roon Server.

-Steve

A post was split to a new topic: Can dtsrender software be installed on ROCK?

Hi Steve,

I’m trying out the Roon software and I have been able to make a connection with my Mac via bootcamp and windows. I installed DTS-Playfi and connects but there doesn’t seem to be a way to play anything above 16bit /44.1 kHz. Anything 24 bit/192 kHz and less just gets converted. Is there anyway around this because I really like Roon?

Thanks,

Mark Ghazal

Hi Mark,

I don’t have that issue on windows 10. I haven’t tested how far it will go but 24bit/96khz is not a problem.

Because Play-Fi and Roon don’t play well together (PlayFi drivers eventually mess with Roon) I am using a PlayFi gateway between Roon and my speakers so they do not have to interact - so the gateway will be the limit of the resolution I can send - which I expect to be 24bit /192Khz - the PlayFI max). It seems to work well and its one of the daily deals on Amazon - its was $99.

Hope that helps. It may also be a network limitation. In case you decide to go with the gateway, I have my DAC/AMP (Chord Mojo) between the Roon server and gateway.

-Steve

This Klipsch Gateway seems to have been discontinued, no availability on Amazon Canada. Has there been a similar product or successor during the last few years?