Raspberry Pi Support [Released in Roon 1.2]

Feedback Feature Suggestions
41

I’m also waiting for the Roonspeaker RPI solution, specifically one that supports DSD playback. Do the squeezebox solutions mentioned above support DSD?

I’m wondering if another option for Roon RPI playback is with the new HQPlayer support. Seems like it’s possible to run HQPlayer on my iMac along with RoonServer, then somehow connect HQPlayer to an RPI2 NAA. But after googling last night it seems there are no pre-packaged SD card images for this, though it may be possible to custom craft an RPI2+HifiBerry HQPlayer NAA. Lots of Linux admin skills required…

Anyone try this yet?

Muski

42

Muski - Roon’s likely not going to answer that since they are not supporting Squeezelite. But I’ve got my Squeezelite up and running with the new version of Roon. Granted, it’s running on a Cubox-i, not an RPi, but that should not make any difference.

Everything plays great EXCEPT DSD. Granted, DSD’s play. But Roon is converting them to 176.4kHz PCM before passing them along to the Squeezelite. And that’s NOT what I want. I want DOP going to my Squeezelite (running the -D option) so it gets passed as a DSD file to my DOP supporting DAC. I assume that’s what you are looking for too. I’ve dug into this, and THINK I may know why this is happening.

It appears that sending any DSD file - at all - is a recent modification to LMS, and is not supported by ANY physical Squeezebox. Sure, you can wrap the DSD file in a FLAC wrapper, and it will work with Squeezebox Touchs. But that’s not the same thing. Bottom line is that Squeezebox does not support DOP. So Roon set their Squeezebox support up to read DSD, but convert it to PCM so that the Squeezebox could at least play the music, just not as a native DSD file. And frankly, my hat’s off to them for doing that.

Unfortunately that means that we Squeezelite people that want to play native DSD are not going to get it with the new Squeezebox support.

If I’ve got any of this incorrectly, I’m happy to be corrected. But this is how it appears to me.

43

7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Raspberry Pi as an HQP NAA

44

Thanks for your post. Yes, I was thinking about the DoP support that people got working with a Touch. From what I understand, the DAC chip in the Touch is the only Slimdevice that supported 192kHz—which is needed for DoP.

But I was able to get DSD working using HQPlayer on my iMac connected to a RPI2 running as a NAA. It’s a bit fiddly to set up, but I’m happy with it now.

best
muski

45

Muski - Glad you got things working. But I need to set the record straight… Build 88 DOES support native DSD to Squeezebox devices. Aparently I had set mine up with an iPod Roon app, which (as of this writing) is still the prior version due to the delays of Apple approving new/changed apps in their app store. But once I configured the Squeezebox zone with a build 88 Roon, the setup gears that allowed selection of DoP for the device were shown. They were not visible in the old iPod app that I had been using.

Once I was able to see that option, selecting DoP got full native DSD working on my Squeezelite device. Apologies for any confusion I may have caused.

Happy listening.

47

Interesting–thanks for the update. I’ll try an RPI2 build with Squeezelite and give it a go…

48

I’ve been holding my breath for RPI2 support since @brian announced that it was close in Oct. any update on when we might be able to get our hands on even a beta version?

49

I have the RPI2 with all the right software pieces working, but nothing put together into anything releasable.

Working on that and Roon Server appliances!

2 Likes
50

Thats brilliant news. I have been playing with HQP, but frankly I just dont see the need for upsampling and want to play my files as is. Not to mention the extra headaches with settings and so on…oh yes and of course cost :smile: oh dont want to mess with squeezelite either, just a roon made endpoint :smile:

Will the PI be a simply instalable image? This would help a lot of people (like me with minimal linux skills) and probably rovide a more stable experience than miriad of potential custom installs people might try.

thanks

51

This is a RoonSpeakers implementation, right?

52

@fritzg: yes, but to make this product really useful, we need to give you an entire OS you can put on an sd card

@BE718: yes, doing it not-as-an-image would be a disaster. it’s not just you.

1 Like
53

@danny, what distro are you using as a base? will you be making the binaries available separately for those that want to “roll their own”?

54

I’m not using any other distro as a base. I built it from scratch. The goal was to be trivially simple. It’s clocking in at around 40mb right now. Yes, megabytes.

We will probably have a release for rolling your own, but it’s too early for details.

4 Likes
55

Love that answer on sooooo many levels

56

Just a thought: why not work with the folks at Volumio.org that are already doing this with a variety of platforms, like Pi, Cubox-i, et al.?

57

Simply awesome, can’t wait to see(hear) it :smile:

58

Sigh, too early for details makes it sound like this is a ways off. Is RoonSpeakers as a whole facing a significant delay?

59

@fritzg – a bit of a delay. a couple of months. all those releases we’ve had since launch were all time spent NOT on RAAT and RoonSpeakers.

RAAT hardware partners were first however, then software (RoonSpeakers). The latest announcement of hardware partners who are RoonReady (meaning they implement RAAT) signifies the completion of that work (or at least most of it).

60

Thanks for that update. Here’s hoping you all can foucs on RoonSpeakers (and an iPhone controller app!) now that those with golden ears have their HQ Player integration. :smile:

61

I take it external DACs will be supported in some way.