Recommend me a whole house setup

Hi,

I’m new to Roon and trying to work out if it’s right for me. I love the ability of being able to stream music around the house. My Apple Homepods are too unreliable (poor WiFi possibly).

I have chrome cast built into my tv and being able to show the album art is great but i don’t believe I can play the same track on multiple chrome cast video.

So what’s the best hardware set up (on a budget £1k?) spread across multiple audio/video devices?

Airplay 2 support I’m guessing would solve my question?

For Core machine an i3 or i5 NUC, depending on the size of your music collection and whether you want to use DSP. If Roon is going to be its sole use then ROCK, otherwise WIN10.

For now, until you have some experience, use an RPi type SBC, running either DietPi or Ropieee OS, as your endpoints.

You don’t say whether you can run Ethernet cable or not. Ethernet is the preferred way to go. Next would be WiFi and dead last Airplay. The SQ on Airplay is terrible, IMHO.

People will have additions and other opinions, but these are mine, for a start.

Everything considered, with five endpoints or so, will probably run around $1K or whatever that is in Brit money. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Since you mentioned that you may have poor wifi, you need to determine if you can run ethernet to the locations you want to use an endpoint. If you can’t run ethernet, then you need to resolve your wifi issues first.

Perhaps moving your wifi AP might help. There are quite a few phone based apps that will measure signal strength. If moving doesn’t help you may want to consider a wireless bridge in the weak areas, a more powerful/advanced AP, or look into a mesh wifi solution if your home is too big for a single AP.

I’ve got good WiFi everywhere, so my setup is all WiFi (but my Roon Core machine is connected over Ethernet to my WiFi router). Google Assistant speakers in every room (all of which are Roon endpoints), various kinds. In one room, I also have an amp and speakers with a Chromecast Audio plugged in as the WiFi+DAC for that setup. In my main stereo, in addition to the Google speaker, I ditched the Chromecast for a RPi 3B+ running RoPieee (about $60), feeding a USB DAC (prices can vary widely from about $200 to many thousands of $) which then feeds the the stereo. You can expand this setup indefinitely for a cost of about $50-$300/speaker (depending on how good you want your endpoints to sound). I set up an always-on Amazon Fire HD tablet ($120 including charging stand) as a pick-up-and-use remote control (instructions on the forum).

Sorry - i’ll add more detail. I have an i7 Nas connected via Ethernet to half of my house, with mesh WiFi so technically the internet is very stable. Although in my bedroom, where my Apple homepods are it’s at its weakest.

I find my HomePods lacking - Siri most of the time will have trouble doing the simpliest of tasks. I’m gutted I didn’t buy a load of Google Home Max’s when they were £200.

Im looking for a way to stream the same song to three different rooms but all my rooms currently use different methods. Two are chrome cast video and one is Apple homepod.

I’m happy to replace my homepods , and the chrome casts for something similar if they are all Roon compatible.