@DrCWO - just got this working in conjunction with rooDial - love how straightforward it is and think it will manage my use case perfectly - thanks!
One question - I’ve always used an external Wifi dongle (tp-link Archer T2U Nano) on my RPi 3b devices as the onboard Wifi is abysmal. Is there any chance of adding support for this dongle? Your docs mention Bluetooth dongles but I wasn’t sure about Wifi? Thanks!
I recommend the ZEXMTE double Bluetooth antenna.
There is no recommendation for WiFi for me except that I (same as Roon) don’t recommend WiFi 
Best DrCWO
Well, I agree with you in principle but rooExtend offers some great functionality and not all of it is data heavy. It would be great to see at least some external WiFi support (similar to RoPieee).
It may not be data heavy, but it sure is latency critical.
Sure…but this is a bit chicken and egg…because there doesn’t seem to be external Wifi support, and because RPi Wifi varies between awful and tolerable (or awful and awful if in a metal case), then it becomes true that Wifi can’t work reliably in this scenario. However, I can’t help feeling that if I can stream DSD256 via Wifi then I should be able to twiddle a volume knob. 
You can unse any WiFi Dongle with rooExtend that is supported by DietPi.
Best DrCWO
Ah, thanks @DrCWO , that should hopefully sort me out, and also explains why mine doesn’t work out of the box.
If this were enabled would it mean I would be able to play my vinyl (Analogue in on ADI) directly through Roon (utilising my room convolution filters etc) without having to use RooPlay (which inherently adds a time lag; or am I misunderstanding?
Thanks
Kevin
Hi @Kevin_Robertson,
with rooADI you can control the device volume of the RME ADI-2 family of DACs directly from Roon. This Roon Extension also offers settings for the DAC’s input selection.
To playback music from your Turntable via Roon and its DSPs you additionally need my the rooPlay Roon Extension. As rooPlay expects audio to be delivered via USB you also need an ADC and a Phono Pre to deliver this.
In both cases the DAC of the ADI-2 Pro or ADI-2/4 Pro can be used for playback simultaneously 
So connecting the rooExtend-Box or a Raspberry Pi4 with the rooExtend SD-Card to an ADI-2 Pro or ADI-2/4 Pro you get a complete playback solution for Roon.
Best DrCWO
I recently received this comment on my video from rooADI, which I would like to answer here. Maybe this is also interesting for other rooADI users:
DrCWO, thank you for the video and I also enjoyed reading your paper! I have a question about your slide about digital volume control though. My understanding of a DAC with resolution of 20 bits is like it can generate analogue signals that represent the 20 MSB accurately, while the remaining LSB will be inaccurate (due to noise or distortion). Now, if we have a signal of XXXX…XXXX (24 bits, each X is a bit) being digitally attenuated by 30 dB (5 bits), it will become 00000XXX…XXXX (5 zeros and first 19 Xs). With a DAC of 20 bit resolution, I think the DAC can only play the first 5 zeros and 15 Xs accurately, resulting in an effective bit depth of only 15 bits, one bit lower than CD quality. This is different from the calculation you presented in the slides, which says we can attenuate by 48 dB without going below CD quality. Would you please enlighten me if there is anything wrong in my calculation? Thank you!
Most modern DACs support 24 bit or even 32 bit. But that doesn’t mean that they can also transfer this high resolution to the analogue range 
The small Topping D50III for example accepts 32 Bit digitally. However, in the analogue domain it “only” offers a dynamic range of around 126 dB, which corresponds to around 21 Bit. From Bit 22 onwards, everything is noise and non-linear distortion.
If you look at DSP volume control, it’s not as simple as cutting off Bits. The topic of “dithering” and errors made by “truncation” also play an important role here. I’ve examined this in great detail using the Roon DSP volume control as an example. It completely works in the digital domain WITHOUT any conversion to analogue.
The result of the measurement shows (Page 10/11 of the PDF) that using a source signal with 16 Bit or 24 Bit resolution and a volume reduction via DSP of 40dB, the signal is not damaged by the Roon DSP. The signal-to-noise ratio in this case is still 138dB. So it can be assumed that even with a reduction of 50dB, the limit of the resolution of a modern DAC (126 dB see D50III) is just reached.
This means:
With a 16 or 24 Bit input signal, this will only be damaged by Roon DSP volume if the volume will be reduced by more than 50 dB!
Now the signal-to-noise ratio of the DAC comes into play. For the DAC, you can enter a horizontal line at -126dB in the graph on page 10/11 for its signal-to-noise ratio, as this is the limit below which the DAC only delivers noise.
With a DSP volume of -40dB (Peak at 1kHz) and the DAC, you have a signal-to-noise ratio of 126dB - 40dB = 86dB. It gets even worse if you enter the line where the signal-to-noise ratio of the most transparent power amplifiers on the market is, namely at 116dB - 40dB = 76dB! And this is already the best case if the DAC is directly connected to the power amplifier without a preamplifier or analog potentiometer that generates additional noise and distortion!
What can we learn from this:
The limit of the resolution today is determined by the signal-to-noise ratio of the power amplifier. If this is 116dB (which is an excellent value) we only get these 116dB dynamic range when the power amplifier is nearly fully loaded. The more we reduce the input signal, the more the dynamic range we get at the speaker terminals is reduced. Whether the reduction of the input signal of the power amplifier is done using a potentiometer or via DSP volume is therefore completely irrelevant. With a potentiometer it gets even worse as it adds distortion and noise.
All discussions regarding DAC resolution are “academic” as there are no power amplifiers at the market today (begin 2025) matching the high dynamic range of the DACs.
Chose the combination of speakers and power amplifier wisely so you get about 100dB sound pressure if the amplifier is fully loaded. Otherwise you sacrifice dynamic range.
Best DrCWO
My setup planned with this in mind:
As the ADI-2/4 offers high output voltage the 11dB amplification of the NCx500 (where I get 116db S/N-ratio) are enough to drive my Horn-Speakers to 100dB sound pressure at the listening position. Sounds absolutely stunning 
Hi @DrCWO
I joined the ADI-2 DAC club and got your rooADI extension 
It’s working perfectly and is a very nice addition The ADI-2 DAC itself is very impressive and the build quality is excellent.
Previously I used a Bluesound Node. It had the ability to control Roon with play/pause/prev/next (transport control on IR input). I miss that function with rooADI. Is there any possibility to add that function to rooADI? Or will I have to wait for something like rooIR?
The second thing I wondered about is that when I plug in headphones in the ADI-2 DAC Roon/rooADI keeps controlling volume for the line output. Is there any way for roo-ADI to auto sense the headphones plugged in and change volume control to the headphone output? I know I can change it in the extension settings but that’s buried way down in settings.
Thanks again for another great extension
Why not use rooDial or even better rooMax?
This is an interesting question. I will put it on my Worklist and see what I can do.
Best DrCWO
I do use both rooNumio and rooMax but sometimes I use my Harmony remote because it controls other things as well like Plex. Then it’s nice to also have the option to contol Roon transport and not change remote mid stream
Sounds great. Thank you.
I see, rooIR is on my long term list
Best DrCWO
Hi
This is a question from a newbee, but we all started one day or another…
I currently use IFI Zen Stream, but I am tired of the fixed volume control implemented for roughly the past 2 years with the new Roon Ready certification.
My Raspberry Pi4 is now on the way from Amazon (ordered this morning), and I plan to use it connected to my ADI 2 DAC FS.
I was initially planning to install Ropieee and see how things are going on.
And I found this amazing add-on, which look promising, although for the time being everything is “theoretical” as I neither have anything to play with nor to compare 
Should I understand that if I buy your rooADI, I’ll get an image with a license included that will replace Ropieee, or will it come on top of Ropieee?
I like to plan things carefully in advance
Hi @MacArthur and welcome 
Good decision
What you need is a Raspberry Pi and a SD-Card. Visiting my website at http://diy.rooExtend.com you find a link to the download area. There you can download the SD-Card-Image for free. Also you can find the Quick Installation Guide there.
You flash the SD-Card with BalenaEtcher from the downloaded image and you’ll be fine. Connect the ADI 2 DAC and you will be able to playback from Roon. Until here it’s all for free and you can check if it works.
In this configuration you don’t have device volume control for the ADI. To get it please visit the rooADI-Page and get a License Code. This code you can enter in the appropriate section of the rooExtend License Manager that you find in Roon Settings/Extensions.
Having entered it go to the device Settings of your ADI 2 DAC in Roon and select rooADI as Volume control. More details in the Quick Installation Guide or the rooExtend-Box Manual in my Download Area.
If all this works fine you may think about using one of my Roon Remote Control Extensions e.g. for the Microsoft Surface Dial or for the much more sophisticated QuickKeys Controller from Xencelabs.
Best DrCWO
All is fine; downloaded, read and clear
Looking at the page to buy a rooADI license, I see that payment through credit card is, for the time being, unavailable. Is this a temporary issue, or is it going to be for a while?
Paying through PayPal from Cambodia is going to be a nightmare (don’t ask me why; PayPal is a big machine).
Anyway, I still have around 10 days before the little pink fruit arrives…
It was disabled by Sellocdes for quite a while. They now switches to a different payment service and say they will enable Creditcard Payment. But I don’t know when this will happen. Guess not so soon 
Are you able to transfer money to a German Bank account if I send you the SEPA number?
1st I’ll try PayPal, but being successful is totally random…
Otherwise Yes, I can; it just means crazy transfer fees 
Hi DrCWO
I just got my Pi 4 and am about to start the setup.
My router, Archer AX6000, only gives me WPA2-PSK[AES] encryption at 2.4 GHz and not WPA-PSK[AES].
Should I understand that I won’t be able to connect to WiFi?
Thanks in advance,
Mac
