Roon Chromecast v’s Qobuz Chromecast

I hope I’m posting this in the right section.

This afternoon I noticed something odd. So I initially started using Chromecast to stream some tracks in 24bit/96kHz from Qobuz via my Roon core to a B&O Beosound 1 speaker, and on each occasion, Roon would downsample to 24bit/48kHz.

I then decided to stream from the Qobuz app on my iPad using Chromecast directly to the Beosound 1 and it correctly streamed in 24bit/96kHz as expected.

As far as I’m aware the maximum quality handled by Chromecast is 24bit/96kHz so I cannot understand why Roon was forcing the tracks to be downsampled to 24bit/48kHz?

Is there a way to enable Roon to stream via Chromecast to the Beosound 1 in 24bit/96kHz? I’ve looked into the Roon device settings for the Beosound 1 and I’m unable to see anything that would enable this.

Nope the reason Roon wont is because B&O have not implemented the hires flag that is required for
Roon to know the device can handle that hires. Roon followed Google’s specs to the letter which ends up being its weakness here. It’s part of the Chromecast implementation to have a flag that lets devices know but most vendors seem to ignore this and Google allow it through certification. It’s pot luck if yout device uses it and Roon will allow hires. Qobuz will just send what it is regardless and it up to eh endpoint to negotiate it in some cases that might just fail.

Thanks for the reply.

In that case, would there be a possibility of maybe Roon adding an option in a future update to manually disable the flag if streaming via Chromecast to a particular device in the settings for that device in Roon or would that create other issues?

There are features requests add your voice to them but I would not count on it ever getting implemented their CC implementation was done in close partnership with Google years ago so I can’t seeing them changing it to support ones that don’t follow the full guildlines.

How were you able to confirm that the Beosound 1 was receiving 96 kHz? Roon discloses that step by step signal path information and reveals sample rate conversion, while most other software and hardware do not.

AJ

I was going by what Qobuz app was displaying. For example, I selected a track that was 24bit/192kHz but when I streamed it from the Qobuz app via chromecast to the Beosound 1, it would change to show it was being streamed to the Beosound 1 in 24bit/96kHz instead of the track’s original 24bit/192kHz.

Ok, thanks for the reply.

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