It was great to at last enable the Wireless II’s in ROON yesterday.
However, I have an immediate problem that consistently comes up with the message: “Roon lost control of the audio device because the input has switched”.
The steps are: Firstly the LS50WII’s were enabled and the icon appears bottom right of the ROON screen as the selected speakers playing.
Meanwhile the LS50WII’s are setup on my core computer and show as such with the speaker icon bottom right of screen (below the ROON page).
Thirdly, on the KEF App the Bluetooth button is selected and highlighted.
Now, as soon as a track is selected for playing in ROON, the music comes through the LS50WII’s but the Bluetooth button in the KEF App immediately disconnects and becomes blank and the Windows 10 speaker icon no longer shows that the LS50WII speakers are selected. There is now no volume control possible for that track playing through the LS50WII’s (regardless of Device setup setting in ROON) and no speakers are shown despite the track being audible on the LS50WII’s.
As soon as the Bluetooth button is activated again in the App, ROON immediately stops working along with the “ROON lost control” message above, and the LS50WII’s immediately appear again as the selected speakers on the Windows 10 speaker icon. There appears to be no way around this from my experimentation so far. Any help please?
Looks like the LS50w II isn’t working as a mixer. Try to avoid using different inputs (Roon Ready, BlueTooth, …) at the same time.
Roon Ready (direct connection between Roon Core and speaker over network): Choose another playback device for Windows; don’t try to change volume for the KEF’s in Windows; don’t use the KEF App to switch inputs.
BlueTooth (Roon is playing to your PC; your PC sends the audio via BlueTooth to speaker but Roon can’t know that): Your setup before the speaker became Roon Ready certified, I assume. Continue using this setup if you want/expect other PC sources to play sound trough the KEF’s. You can use the volume controls of Windows.
While it’s best to have only one Zone configured per device/speaker/DAC (don’t enable or disable other, no longer used Zones/devices), make sure to name the different zones in a way so you can distinguish between them if you need more than one. This helps immensely to choose the right one at any given time.
Many thanks BlackJack for some very useful tips there. I’ve now moved Windows to another playback device and guess by your underscoring the need for a direct connection between the Roon core and LS50WII’s that I should change the present connection via bluetooth to either an optical or COAX one (any preference?). Also how does one control the volume of the LS50WII’s from my Windows 10 Desktop Roon core with the Windows volume control now inactivated for these speakers?
I just wrote that using the Roon Ready connection is a direct connection between the Roon Core and the LS50WII (over the network). That is why the Windows built-in mixer is out of the audio chain in this case.
You surely can do that, I personally prefer optical because it comes with noise isolation, but it changes nothing IMO on the situation described above (BlueTooth). Roon plays to your Windows PC and doesn’t know about you sending the audio to your speaker using bluetooth, coax or optical.
Over the Roon App I assume? Or maybe what ever other method your speaker provides for that case.
I don’t have those speakers so maybe you better ask that in the #audio-products:kef section of the forum.
Your speaker seems to have different inputs like for example: Roon Ready, Coax, Optical, … . This means that he also has some built-in pre-amp. Like its standalone counterparts, there is an input selector of some sorts and you can’t set the input selector to more than one input a the same time. So choose an input and stick with it.
Many thanks Vincent. The remote is an obvious solution now you mention it and this works well after having dug it out from where it was buried! I was so used to controlling volume through the PC, this alternative just hadn’t occurred to me.