RAAT / RoonBridge or HQP?

We are all going to be faced with this choice soon (those lucky enough to have Roon Ready appliances may already be in this quandary).

No doubt, SQ from Roon is great and RoonBridge may be everything we have been waiting for to control endpoints of whichever flavour we own. In doing so, one will have to forego HQP, as this has to own the stream after Roon.

Is this going to cause gnashing of teeth for those who have enjoyed HQP, which fantastic as it is, still runs effectively completely separate to Roon, which ‘simply’ hands over the music to HQP, where you then have to distribute as you see fit, direct or NAA. Which will you choose? :sweat:

Personally, I would love Roon to either integrate HQP fully, or bring on their equivalent DSP enhancer. Not much to ask? :wink:

I’ve yet to try HQPLAYER, however my feeling is that Roon should concentrate on the whole metadata experience once RAAT is out in the wild. The fact that Roon integrates well with HQPLAYER is great for people with interest in this but I’d caution Roon from becoming a bloat ware jack of all trades or tying to reinvent the wheel.

Products like the SOSE, being both an NAA and Roon endpoint are obvious choices for people who want to try HQPLAYER with Roon ( indeed I have one on the way) but to Joe Public on the other fora I visit Roon is all about metadata, it’s best not to dilute this message.

SJB

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Agreed SJB, but at outset of Roon, the guys did say that they would look at all other sorts of bells’n’whistles, such that Roon will become the go to music management application. And they are doing an excellent job so far.

Everyone’s wishes for new features to Roon will differ, but I think the core metadata handling is already way better than anything else, not perfect, many support posts are testament to that, but they do listen, they do look into metadata and database issues very quickly.

RoonBridge is the main missing part of the jig-saw (from whence we started) and I would add iRadio, as this would pretty much complete the gamut of sources most would want or need. Diversification away from just Tidal (say Qobuz, hint, hint) would also be welcome, nothing wrong with Tidal as such, just an alternative choice or two to safeguard against providers getting sub-happy or falling away.

But once RAAT, RoonBridge, iRadio are part of Roon what are the Roon guys going to be doing with themselves I wonder :innocent:

Just to pick up on your point, Roon and HQP remain two different pieces of software with fairly good integration given that a few slim devices you mention are picking up on Roon and HQP protocols. But they do not mix, you still have to choose one or the other. With attending issues that I have been getting (USB disconnection) which is caused as far as I can see, by HQP NAA, not Roon or the slim device.

Ok I’ve tried both.

I need to explain my setup first though. I have a headless Ubuntu server PC on which currently resides Plex media server for video, HQPlayer and will get Roon headless when it comes out. That is connected to a Synology NAS, where all the files reside. Connected to the TV and HiFi is a modified Mac mini and an Exasound e28 dac, so good for multichannel and stereo audio and video. Also on the network are 2 raspberry pi, each with an Iqaudio dac. The Mac mini currently has Roon server on it, but it will get replaced by RAAT when that comes out, Plex media player and also an HQP NAA. Each pi has 2 sd cards, 1 with Jussi’s NAA image and another with Iqaudio’s beta of RAAT.

I have been trying both of them out with a Pi, As I can’t get the NAA on the Mac to send Dsd to the Exasound reliably at the moment, it insists on sending pcm. It’s a complete pain having to exchange sd cards to compare the 2, but at the moment it’s the only way.

To play using RAAT all I need do is fire up the pi and the iPad choose Roon, select the Pi zone and some music and off we go. Simple quick, easy and wife friendly.

To play using HQPlayer, as it resides on a headless Linux box running an OS without a GUI (a prerequisite), I have to fire up a MacBook, load an X11 server connect to the Linux box and forward the desktop to the MacBook, fire up HQPlayer, choose one of the 3 NAA’s, hope it and Roon have remembered that it’s good to talk, fire up the iPad choose Roon select the NAA zone and some music and off we go.

Simple, quick, wife friendly easy to setup? I’ll leave that to you. I know I could make it slightly easier, by putting a desktop on the Ubuntu server, but I don’t want to.

The only way I’d put up with the faffing, especially if it goes wrong somewhere is if the sound quality was many times superior in HQP. To my ears and with my equipment, which is never ever going to be real top end stuff, I afraid it isn’t.

So I am happy with 90-95% of the quality and 5% of the complication. Making sure others understand how to use what we have is always the overriding factor for me.

Paul

Great post @weedos, to sum up, Roon is for everyone, HQP is for geeks! :confused:

Seriously though, I feel the integration for HQP and their NAA could be much tighter, and give a viable alternative (not necessarily as universal like RAAT & RoonBridge hope to be) to those not so into the tweakery. Unfortunately for Jussi, I think the ball is in his court though.

Like @weedos, I think I’ll be staying in the Roon camp. Roon will only get better and better. While I have no issue dealing with the extra complication of HQP, I don’t think it provides enough benefits for the DACs that I currently employ. Now, this might change. If indeed I got a NOS or a PerfectWave or a Yggy.