RAAT [was Roon Speakers] - What , When, How and for Whom?

It can do that today into Apple and Meridian end points.

@brian Just want to say I’m continuously impressed by the roon team, clarity, and incredible design. Obviously this didn’t happen overnight. The deep expertise and thoughtful architecture truly shine.

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I concur. Amen.The timing could not be more provident given where the hobby is and where roon is taking it. Quo Vadis? Lead on.

Best,
Richard

@brian I’ve been thinking a lot more about this since I have an Aurender inbound for evaluation this week……

I just wonder whether you’d consider making a tweak down the line - in cases where the hardware is current enough to be able to perform a function natively - Roon could just act as a remote control.

Some examples assuming I had an Aurender or similar:

i) I want to play local file from the Aurender, no up sampling and its a format the Aurender can deal with - Roon just acts as a remote and lets the Aurender do its thing.
ii) I want to upsample, or play a format that Aurender doesn’t support, Roonspeakers works as you suggest and just uses the Aurender to send data to.
iii) i want to play from a streaming service it doesn’t support (i.e. when you add Qobuz before them :wink: ), same as ii

I guess this is just selfish as I want to use Roon with any new streamer I buy, but not at the expense of throwing away a lot of (hopefully) well designed and optimised hardware, and making its local storage pointless…

Or perhaps let hardware vendors have their own customisable Roon offering - that would put the onus on them to sort this out?

That’d be a hell of a lot more than a tweak for a corner case.

To the best of my knowledge there are probably dozens of various proprietary streaming protocols across the various devices and the resources to seamlessly integrate with all of them, if even technically possible would be a nightmare versus the approach of providing a protocol and api and letting each manufacturer include it.

In one of your points you are using Roon to do the heavy lifting and on the first two you are asking for a mixture of both, ie how would you handle a playlist that includes some supported formats on you Aurender and some that aren’t?

I fully agree with the approach Brian outlined and think you may be envisioning it from the wrong perspective. I see my Roon server as the central hub that feeds outward rather than being directed inward and the various endpoints at locations as the items that should be considered around that. To me this approach goes a long way to providing a universal standard for this type of product, an i eagerly await to seeing which companies hop on board to support it.

My decision for future streamer/endpoint purchases would be based around does this product support the Roon Speakers (i hope this name is changed btw, as the initial assumption when seeing it is it is a hardware product versus what it actually is) protocol or not. to me it makes streamers with local storage redundant as they are not necessary when i can have a dedicated server to all of the processing for anything in the house versus doing to processing at each and every point. This allows for the end devices to be much more interchangeable.

It is. Devices will be termed “RoonReady”.

The technical name for the protocol is RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Transport).

“RoonSpeakers” is a software app that we will release for people who want to DIY a solution on commodity hardware (mac, pc, linux, ios, android).

The terminology evolved after we started talking about RoonSpeakers, so there’s been some mild confusion on this site.

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For all those of us who do not use a computer for streaming Roon is just a very nice feature for exploring music, but not for enjoying music because we only can play through AirPlay while having excellent hardware like Aurender for example which SQ we cannot use due to the lack of “RoonReady” devices.

You guys @Not_Roon do a great job but please don’t forget us with separate streaming devices. I do have the feeling that all this computer stuff like HQ player gets more attention than all those other serious players.

Hi NOA,

I know at least @danny has an Auralic Aries and the team generally are very familiar with Meridian streaming, so there is no fear of bridges or streamers being left behind. If anything I see Roon bending over backwards to pick up every device they possibly can (eg: Raspberry Pi and Squeezebox).

My understanding is that bridges and streamers that don’t have an exposed operating system (nearly all) will need firmware or driver updates to be RoonReady. At the moment the manufacturers are waiting on the software development kit (SDK) from Roon. After that is sent out then we will see the implementation software being published by the relevant manufacturers. In the case of Auralic, Mr Wang told me he thought it would take them two months from release of the SDK. I haven’t heard an estimate regarding Aurender.

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Thanks for your reply but that’s not new to me. As you said, Auralic and Aurender are waiting on Roon, but HQ integration among others you’ve mentioned as well have more priority than SDK, obviously.

This thread has by far the most views so it is very clear to me that a lot of users are waiting for this, but others are maybe louder and therefore get more hearing.

Again, this is critical in terms of SQ for external players. Because I do not see priority in SDK I do not go for lifetime membership. It just doesn’t make sense to have Roon with its excellent capabilities but for critical listening switching to other apps. That’s what I do since the start of Roon and for sure I’m not alone!

My understanding is that RoonSpeakers and the SDK will be released before HQPlayer integration. At most they may be at the same time.

Would love to agree but Danny just posted some hours ago:

Squeezebox is almost ready, we’ve just been testing with more and more gear and gearing up for release. Lots of QA in progress.

HQ Player is next, and should be able to leverage the work from Squeezebox, so it should go quick. I cant promise an ETA. We all know you guys are waiting!

Yes, I suspect the reason @danny didn’t mention RoonSpeakers in that post is because it is at a more advanced stage of development than Squuezebox or HQPlayer. I certainly didn’t understand that RoonSpeakers was being delayed in order to prioritise other things.

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The RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Transport) SDK will be out to manufacturers very shortly, even before SqueezeBox is released publicly. That is happening in days, not weeks.

Roonspeakers, the software-only implementation of RAAT will come out soon after. It’s all about packaging and UI at that point. The hard work is done.

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It wasn’t mentioned just because it’s a post within the HQ Player topic. Regarding your last sentence my feeling is different but I hope you are right.

Roonspeakers can’t come fast enough for me.

When I signed up for Roon I pulled my Raspberry Pi (running Volumio) out of my system and put my MacBook back in for the first time in a couple years.

Now my Devialet doesn’t want to play nice with my MacBook, and I’m having all kinds of USB issues, but I can bring myself to pull the MacBook out of the system because of the user experience with Roon.

Consider me one motivated beta tester if you want some feedback on Roonspeakers running on a Raspberry Pi with a Devialet.

Hmm … that distinction is not very clear to me ATM. Hope it’s more clear upon release. :wink:

Roon Advanced Audio Transport (RAAT) is the underlying protocol. It will be implemented in software for various operating systems (iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux) and those apps/programs will be called RoonSpeakers. Where RAAT is implemented in firmware or hardware, the device will be RoonReady.

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Thanks Danny, that’s great news. Sorry for being impatient and maybe unfair as well.

Will take it for granted. Just upgraded to lifetime membership. Can’t wait to hear Aurender playing in RoonSpeaker mode.

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It’s a leap of faith. But IMO the folks at Roon Labs have been honest and accurate in all of their communications. And I - as so many here do - believe in their product, and abilities to move if forward. So…

Based on this statement from @danny, like @NOA, I’ve just jumped on the lifetime bandwagon too. Looking forward to the future!

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