Roon Input Hub for external sources

I know there are similar threads on related topics but I couldn’t find one to easily put this. The mods can move this if necessary.

I think it would be a great addition to Roon at some point if there was capability for an Input Hub. My own particular wish is for vinyl replay and theatre throughput analogue inputs. I could, however, also see spdif coax/toslink, usb and even a mic input for when HAF room correction filter generation is embedded into Roon (worth a try!), HDMI for multi-channel sources…

Actually the room correction is a significant driver here. Acourate is good, HAF is even better. In both cases the impact is the greatest step change I have perceived in over 30 years messing around with Hifi. The thread is not about that, but having to listen to vinyl without the HAF room correction means less vinyl now, which is a shame as I enjoy the whole needle drop experience. Being able to route vinyl and other “live” sources through Roon would be great.

I’m sure an input hub would involve many technical complications for the Roon team and maybe not enough people want it but it would be nice to know if its possible or even being considered. There are obviously a lot of potential implications for Roon but it would be nice to try and keep this thread focused to whether or not something like this is wanted more generally and also if it is practically possible for the Roon team to do.

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I have also thought about this because I use convolution filters generated with Acourate for room correction and active crossovers. I would also like to be able to play vinyl and TV audio through my audio systems.

I have not experimented with this yet because I currently have a pair of DIY speakers and a tube amp under construction and those two projects take up all of my play time. I have spent a little time thinking about how I would try this though, and my first thought would be to purchase a sound card with analog and digital inputs and install it on the computer connected to my home office (and tinkering) system. I still have a license for JRiver so I would install it on that computer and try to route the sound card inputs to JRiver’s ASIO input. I could then use JRiver’s DSP to process my convolution filters and then pass the signal to my DAC.

Admittedly, I have not tried any of this yet and I am much better with hardware than software so I don’t even know if this would work.

My suggestion would be for Roon to add an ASIO input to all of their PC/Mac/Linux software that supports output functionality. That way I could play vinyl in my office, pass the signal along to my core for the DSP and then send the output to any zone I choose. If I could make all of this work I would probably let my JRiver license expire the next time it comes up for renewal.

This has been suggested for years, and finally seems to be happening over in the Tinkering section with software called CD Player v0.2.0. It uses a RPi to broadcast a stream of lossless files to Roon from a CD or DVD drive mounted via USB.

If this type of device, which converts the format written to a CD on the fly into FLAC, can be programmed to access other sources, like SPDIF, we would have our flexible Input Hub.

I could finally enjoy room correction with music that can’t easily be imported (and then played back later as stored files)!

Most music I play is from my Roon library, on a Mac mini networked to various endpoints.
But sometimes I want to listen to my turntable in the living room, where the best speakers live rather than in the room where the turntable lives.

I have a Korg DAC-10-R A/D converter, and of course I could just record an LP into Roon and play from there. But that’s tedious.

What I’d like to do is to have an extended Roon that could take local inputs and ‘broadcast them’ - so I’d hook up the Linn to the Korg (already done), hook the Korg to the Mac mini (already done), set Roon to play the Korg (which is the new feature requested) and then play to the MiniDSP SHD which drives the Kii’s (already in place).

Obviously, such a system could play any local digital stream, in principle. So I could digitize my FM tuner (we have a very fine classical station, KMFA 98.5, in Austin). And so forth.

Please?

You can do that now kind of by setting up an Icecast system which Roon will see as an Internet Radio station. There have been many threads about this over the years, in Tinkering.

Thanks! hadn’t heard of it.

But I’m lazy; I want a ‘one-box’ solution, not faffing with putting stuff together.

Plus - if other folk want this sort of thing - it adds capabilities to Roon which can further justify folk renting Roon service or buying the software and/or a Roon box…

@DrCWO sells a package to do this on a raspberry pi, which is more plug and play.

Good heavens!
And I have a spare RPi with optimized SP-DIF interfaces to hand.

Thanks much; I shall look into this

– P

How is that any different than loading Icecast onto your Pi?

Hi @Pete_Wilson,

@GregD is right, you can get a rooExtend-Box and the Roon Extension rooPlay shipped with it will be your friend :+1:t2:

If you like you can contact me in the thread below and I’ll be happy to help with all of your questions.

Best DrCWO

Hi I have my roon in a ROCK installed in NUC 11 i5. In parallel I have an OPPO CD player. I have tried to connect the OPPO to the NUC but it is nor identified in ROON.
As you know for sacd reproduction majority of CD platers do not allow digital dsf out to a dac and you ust utilize the analog output after internal cd DAC which is normally a loss of quality
If I could get digital dsf from my OPPO to the NUC I get dsf quality withouth ripping before.
Could it be done with rooplay?

rooPlay accepts USB ADCs with PCM only, so the answer is no :disappointed_relieved:

I digitized my SACD disks on an modified old Playstation of a friend of mine. But there are also some SACD players available that internally convert the DSD signal to 88/24 PCM on their S/PDIF output. This can be captured with a S/PDIF to USB box (see rooPlay thread) with rooPlay and streamed live to Roon.

Best DrCWO

Thanks a lot for your good explanation

I know that this thread is quite old, but I still think it worth a lot more attention.

If Roon support this kind of feature, it would be really easy to plug and play external audio devices with its EQ.

There are several extension which can support this, but as far as I know none of them is capable of streaming without delay because they are actually based on the internet radio.

This could be the remarkable feature for the Nucleus.