Hello all,
I work for an AV firm, we install a lot of gear in residences and yachts. I’ve recently purchased a new house and want to install ceiling speakers for some rooms and Roon is my prefered software for playing music. I want to use one of QSC’s, Q-Sys CX-Q 4K8 network amps. Q-Sys is very clever in that you can use the amp for multiple inputs and also multiple channels out. It’s very DSP heavy and has a lot of flexibility.
The amp allows for example all 8 channels to be used but not simultainiously, you can, via the software use different channels for different inputs. Does Roon support that sort of audio distribution? I assume not?
I don’t really want to have to use a cheap streamer and terrible app to access Qobuz/Tidal/Spotify, I’d much rather use Roons interface.
This is the amp for reference.
Why not both?
Throw a Chromecast or two on the inputs and Roon will send audio to it
Neat bit of kit. So, if I’m reading this right you will need some kind of endpoint with analog out. I like RaspPi with DAC hat.
What’s the speaker set-up? Roon is very flexible in grouping zones or setting up multiple endpoints in a multi-channel configuration. Lot of the “mapping” from input to speaker terminals can be duplicated in Roon.
Example, if you have 4 stereo speaker pairs on the output you could assign each input to a speaker pair. Set-up 4 RaspPi with DAC hats on the inputs. Whole house audio? Group all 4 zones in Roon. Want, say, 4 mono outputs? You can downmix in Roon to mono and send that to one or more endpoints then map that in the amp.
Anyway, you still need endpoints and I suggest they be RAAT based endpoints. But, depending on your speaker set-up, some combination should do exactly what you want here.
Thanks for the input guys.
I could well just line up 4 NUCs & DACs and have 4 inputs into the amp and distrubute them into 4 different zones.
I want to install a mix of stereo ceiling speakers and stereo single speakers into the kitchen, utility room, maybe the hallways and the bathrooms. I’ve got four zones to play with unless I go mono with one or two then I can expand a bit further.
I was hoping Roon would support Q-Sys naitively, but I guess I’ll have to use inputs for the time being. It’s only for throwing a bit of sound around the house, nothing like serious listening, but I might as well use Roon as I have it for my main stereo set-up at home.
I’m just learning the QSC stuff myself, I like the idea of some NUC on the input.
Does the QSC support Dante? I didn’t check the specs but needing out a Roon to Dante bridge would be pretty cool
Why not use four RPi4’s (running Ropieee) + the DAC hat of your choice.
(or the above suggestion of four used Chromecast Audio [CCA] devices off eBay)
Alternatively (if you wanted to get more creative) you could mount 4 RPi + DAC hats in a 19" case and use a single 26A 5v PSU to power them all. Wire the RCA outputs to the back of the 19" case and you’d have a nice 4 zone supporting endpoint in a single unit.