Hi,
I looking for a streamer that can play 5.1 soundtracks. It needs to fully support Roon, input will be a network cable and want to plug it into my Anthem AVR.
I presume it will need to output HDMI as optical/coax only support compressed 5.1?
The budget is around $1k, any recommendations?
Thanks
Good luck with that, your lucky to find any that will do 5.1 at any price let alone one for a £1000. Easiest option is to use a low powered and preferably silent pc as the endpoint running Roon bridge or rock. Nucs end up being used a lot for this.
This one’s a DAC and streamer so you would need to connect analogue outs the AV amp if it has analogue multichannel ins it’s about 8k
Wow really, thought there would be plenty, thanks for the heads up.
Not really a streamer, but I thought had my Shield playing roon 5.1 recently, will have to try it again. Sound quality wasn’t good tho.
Wouldn’t the Nucleus support this with it’s HDMI output?
Don’t think the sheild will with Roon as far as I know it can’t play anything higher than 48/24 either due to Android audio limitations for 2 channel which is what’s it stuck with Not sure it would pass through the bitstream for other codecs either.
Yes but you can buy a nuc for far less to do the same thing with ROCK, takes half an hour at most to set up and it’s far cheaper. I have a passively cooled NUC thin client that’s perfect for this situation and rock runs on it perfectly you just use it as endpoint and never setup the server and tis lightweight 5.1 endpoint.
I believe most any PC with an HDMI output can be set up as a Roon bridge and do the job.
SK
Any PC or MAC use vlc player on either. Make sure you have adjusted audio settings.
Way out of price range but Exasound makes a DAC streamer combo as well as DAC and separate steaming device capable of multi-channel audio.
There was a company out of Florida can’t think of name that had device that took hdmi input and output multi channel analog.
Someone here said it worked OK so basically ignored it.
Anything new regarding 5.1?
I see plenty of AVr’s are now Roon ready, can’t they do 5.1?
Or video network players like Zidoo?
I see this was mentioned previously, A NUC/Rock or Nucleus with HDMI to an AVR will play MC PCM. I have the NUC to AVR setup and have been playing MC music for years. A Roon Ready AVR would probably get MC over Ethernet but not needed for MC with HDMI.
I use an exaSound Sigma streamer in conjunction with their e38 DAC. The combination is less expensive than the s88, but still well over your budget. The streamer (w/ MC USB out; no audio on the DisplayPort) is $750, but I don’t know how well it works, if at all, with a non-exaSound DAC.
Cheapest answer is a mini-x64 computer (possibly in the shape of a HDMI stick) running RoonBridge. Make sure you can return it if multichannel doesn’t work for you.
Good luck!
Thanks. What OS/build do u run on the NUC?
Yes the simplest way, is to use a Rock (you don’t need to use here the Roon server) on a small PC (I’ve there a Zotac Mini with a Celeron) and use the HDMI out. This works out of the box with PCM, DD and dts in multichannel.
If you need DSD, then there doesn’t exists a really cheap solution.
For this I’m using the Okto Research DAC 8 PRO also on a Zotac Mini with a Windows and a Roon Bridge installed there.
A Raspberry Pi4 will do it.
I can run up to 8 channel into my Motu Mk5 lite via Roon Bridge.
Is that over usb or hdmi?
Thanks I’ll take a look.
My NUC is running ROCK. Current version. Roon customized Linux OS. It stays up to date with all updates provided by Roon.
Would you describe your setup? Linux has not usually supported multichannel audio.
SK
Roon supports up to 8/8 channels of audio via USB.
My particular application is a Multiway active speaker setup (2 to 8 stereo path, with applied channel mapping and EQ/crossovers). I have successfully tested convolution and procedural routing up to 8 channels. Alternatively I can use the Motu Mk5 to channel map multi channel 7.1 flac to prove this 7.1 application.
I prepared this quick video to demonstrate 7.1 flac test track playback, mapping to my Motu DAC. Dropbox - 7.1 Flac.MOV - Simplify your life
The Motu processes up to 192khz, this test is at 48khz.
In my experience, later current Linux Kernels support multi channel perfectly fine, and support USB class compliant devices. I personally use Ubuntu server 21.10 (Kernel 5.13).
My setup is:
Rock Roon core (Tried both Ubuntu & Rock) > RPI4 (Ubuntu 21.1) > USB > Motu MK5 lite (Setup as a 7.1 device) > 3x NAD c298 amplifiers > 3way Active Speakers
As per the above video 7.1 source maps fine in Linux.
USB. Motu Mk5 is a USB interface.