Raspberry Pi 4, what to choose

Is 4GB enough for Roon or should I take the 8 GB version?

You’re OK with 4GB…

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If you are only going to run Ropieee, even the 1GB will be sufficient

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Problem is… no Raspberry Pi4 available at the moment in my region… :face_exhaling:

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If the RPi is just going to be used as a Roon endpoint you could look at a small PC (or old PC). Install Ubuntu Server (or other distro) and install Linux Roon Bridge.

USB to a USB DAC to HiFi.

Worked well for me when I did it this way until I got a RPi4.

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Would you consider Roon to Airplay. A Wiim Mini would work (I think).

WiiM Pro via Chromecast even better, and only £50 more (it does Ethernet too). I have both - they sound the same, they just have different connectivity. And both sound better than the RPi4. I was quite surprised by how much. Even more if you juice it with an iFi iPower or similar (+£50).

The Mini is optical out, the Pro optical and coax (the analogue output is passable but no more). Have a look at both reviews on my website for more info. I haven’t posted a link as that feels too obvious :slight_smile:

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Chromecast from Roon isn’t gapless anymore

Airplay is though

I’d forgotten that. Although, purely by coincidence (honest), I was listening to DSOTM via Chromecast / WiiM Pro just before reading your comment. So I went back to it and played through the end of each track. First attempt it was gapless on all tracks apart from 2-3. Second time it went from 1 - WYWH?? Third time it played gaplessly all the way through.

Might be worth pointing out to the OP that the Pro does Airplay 2 as well.

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Agreed

@Cantodea , as per @Phil_Wright wrote :+1:

do you have an available ethernet connection, or is wifi required?

the on-board wireless for the pi4 is not great

if you have ethernet … the NanoPi Neo is cheap (often on Amazon for about $35 US) and works well with ethernet and a usb dac (dragonfly or similar) … total cost of the Neo + a dragonfly black is comparable to the wiim pro, and the Neo is supported by DietPi OS, which makes it relatively easy to install RoonBridge etc.

mine runs RoonBridge, Plexamp, and Airplay2 (via Shairport-Sync) … photo below for reference

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In what respect have you found it not great? I have had no problems and can stream DSD256 and 24/78 when required.

I use three of the RPi 4 as endpoints and think they are excellent.

You may have a different use in mind that makes the wifi not great, but for my use cases it’s really good.

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I have a spare RPi4 4gb. Willing to sell and won’t charge current online prices for used units. PM if you are interested.

Edit: now sold

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apologies for the generalization … pi4 average wifi speed (~ 40Mbps) is good enough for streaming audio, but in any case wifi performance will vary … wifi latency on the pi4 is high and variable compared to my other devices, which can be an issue for applications such as multi-room

My experience: I have a RPi 4 in a Flirc case, located about 8 meters from the router in another room, connected to the 2.4 GHz band. It shows 72 Mbps link rate… This will be considerably higher when connected to the 5 GHz band. Avg ping from the Core to this RPi is 2.6 ms. I have no problem whatsoever when streaming 192/24 content from my Roon Core to this endpoint.

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You are right that wifi can vary; everyone’s mileage may vary. This is very important.

For me I have ping times of < 4ms and an internal network test showed my RPi4 sustained 55 Mbit/s over a several minute test to a wired server. That’s with an extra hop to the router because I use a mesh network.

I calculated that PCM 768/32 requires 48 Mbit/s and DSD512 requires 43.75 Mbit/s so there is plenty of headroom if I wanted to use files of those type or upsample files. I may well be really lucky in having a good WiFi network, but it does show you can get low latency and sufficient bandwidth with a RPi4.

Finally had time for some additional testing …

my Pi4 appears to have wifi thermal throttling issues, and the extent to which it shows depends on how data is being transferred …

if i run an extended iperf test to a wired server, the transfer rate drops for a bit and then recovers … i think iperf sends data every second, so there might be some idle time in there?

for the iperf testing, I tried a few wifi devices (Raspberry Pi4, Raspberry Pi3, and the NanoPi R5C) … and a wired NanoPi R4S for comparison (also tested but not shown … the Pi4 wired was similar to the R4S) … only the Pi4 clearly showed the wifi throttling issue

if i transfer data using something like secure copy (scp), the Pi4 appears to throttle wifi quite a bit more … after a while the transfer will stall and wifi will not respond until things cool off … screenshot from bmon below shows an example of what this looks like

for audio streaming, i guess the impact depends on how an app is transferring data … clocked/pulsed transfer might look more like the iperf testing (in which case the Pi4 wifi throttling might not cause a noticeable issue, or at least not very often)

it’s strange that i see this only on the Pi4 … my Pi3 (which is out in the hot garage) is a bit slower on average, but it doesn’t appear to have this throttling issue … and the M.2 wifi card on the NanoPi R5C always stays in the 200Mbps range

curious if others have seen similar issues on their Pi4 … or maybe mine is defective? … all this is more reason to use ethernet if at all possible :grimacing:

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Er, why did you say this? It’s still gapless on my Chromecast Audio (just tested it with Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album)…

Hi Geoff

I’ve had occasional gapped play back on several known gapless albums with my Chromecast Audio.

Since using a WiiM Pro its gapless.

There are a few historic threads on this (Chromecast not being gapless), one from Danny himself I believe.

I’ll double check again when I’m back from Holiday.

Cheers

Just to clarify, in conjunction with my reply to Geoff.

My Chromecast Audio has had a few issues with gapless and my WiiM Pro has been fine.

The post I refer to from Danny is here

I believe others (Darko) has also mentioned Chromecast not being gapless.

For me personally it’s on and off experience.

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