Roon, now that you, Harmon, and ARCAM are all one big happy family, is their any chance we can get a new firmware for the ARCAM AV860 that could support Roon directly?
I’d love to take my ST60 to the bedroom and have multi-channel playback in the home theater via Roon. Can’t justify updating to a used AV40 or AV41 as I don’t need 16 channels or the expense. Doesn’t help that they are fugly either.
I would not count on multichannel even if it becomes Roon Ready. None of the previous AVRs where and I don’t know of one from any manufacturer that is capable of this. The streaming parts of these devices tends to be stereo only.
Many support multichannel nowadays. I personally worked on the first few years ago… a box from exaSound and one from Merging Technologies. The Nucleus products also have supported multichannel out the HDMI for 8 years now.
I believe that product is both discontinued and from before our time. Harman is a really big company. I can only suggest you reach out to the Arcam group to ask if they plan on doing firmware updates for the AV860.
Hmm, I dont recall saying there are not any Roon multi channel devices only replying to a post about an AVR’ of which the replied content was about, as far I know there there are no RR AVR’s that support Multi Channel audio via RR, yes they can accept it via HDMI but again that wasn’t what the OP was asking.
Multi-channel audio definitely is supported by Roon and it works fine using the HDMI output on my custom built NUC running ROCK. This is basically the same as the Titan or Nucleus hardware.
I’ve gone ahead and moved the NUC running RoonCore to the home theater and am using the HDMI output for multi-channel audio now. Just feels stupid to have such an expensive home theater processor that is “Roon Ready”, from the company that owns Roon, and it not support multi-channel audio without an external streamer. I’ve moved my ST60 to my stereo hifi / DJ system now.
This topic is specifically about multichannel audio over the RoonReady network input of a specific AVR, not over the hdmi output of a NUC.
Are you saying RAAT doesn’t support anything but Stereo audio, because that is not true…
It would be nice if Roon published not just if something is “Roon Ready” but what features are supported or at least publish what “Roon Ready” requires to be certified. The assumption of a buyer is that a multi-channel surround processor or receiver that is “Roon Ready” would fully support all the features of Roon and not a subset.
Agreed. There’s so many of these “optional” things that a RoonReady device may or may not have. And you might find out only after buying it.
Not really Roons fault for lack of Mulitchannel
Support,. Look at the native software/hardware these AVRs platforms are on. Do any of these actually allow network streaming of multichannel of anykind? Look and I think you will find they don’t, well none that I know off any way. NAD none do as BluOs is purely 2 channel. HEOS doesn’t either purely stereo, same for ARCAMs and their own software and Yamaha and MusicCast also the same. Unless the actual hardware Roon is on supports multichannel streaming there isn’t much they can do, they can’t magic it out of thin air as Roon uses the same hardware/software infrastructure as native software so if not designed for it then it won’t use it.
I agree a defined list of what RAAT streaming supports on said device would be useful to know as some don’t support DSD where other networ transports on device do.
Apparently, even if I had the several thousand dollars to upgrade my ARCAM home-theater processor, I can’t even know if it will support multi-channel audio… despite it being a Harmon product.
Can you multichannel stream to it at all?
I have a lot of DVD concerts, some DVD-Audio, and lots of SACD content. I had hoped I could play this over RAAT with a Roon Ready device that has multi-channel capability, such as my ARCAM preprocessor. Sad to see that it isn’t supported on my “retired” ARCAM AV860, but it isn’t clear that the current AV41 supports it either. Again, there isn’t anything explaining what “Roon Ready” means…
Obviously, the processor also accepts multi-channel streams from my XBox and TV via HDMI (Atmos, DTS-HD, etc) and SPDIF (Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM 5.1). I get these streams from Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, but usually it’s Plex serving up content.
I guess I’m going to have to live with Plex and HDMI off the back of my RoonCore as the way to play multi-channel content until RAAT lives up to its promise. It just sounded like since Roon supports multi-channel that RAAT would to, as that is literally what @brian said would be the case in the past.
It does. RAAT is perfectly capable of handling multichannel up to 7.1, but there are very few roon ready devices out there capable of accepting such a stream.
You seem to be missing the point that your AVR doesn’t support multichannel via streaming nor do lots on the market. This is a hardware limitation of streaming boards they buy in not Roon. If the hardware supports it and the vendor codes RAAT to use it it will. But you can’t get 4k output from a 1080p video board can you so here your more or less asking the same thing from Roon to support something the hardware can’t by its design. Doesn’t matter if it’s a multichannel processor or not if the input into it is limited to start with. Take this to the manufacturers as trying to find if they actually support multichannel over DNLA or anything streaming related is rarely advertised as a feature as it’s not and it’s only via support threads you will find it out.
Looks like the Trinnov AV range support multichannel over RAAT Streaming. But at 21k a tad pricey cant find any other AVRs that support multichannel at all via Network playback. . So it possible if the hardware is. You could look at adding an Eversolo DMPA6 as an endpoint and connect that via HDMI. Roon can send multichannel to it and it sends on to the Amp via HDMI. Cheapest option is to use your roon server direct connected or another low cost pc with HDMI and install Roon Bridge on it. Both these will give multichannel.
Luckily, I only have one multi-channel audio setup/room, so I’ll just leave the hdmi from the RoonCore for it. Annoying to have to run a fiber HDMI connection from the server room, but it works.
