Ah, you’ve just shown me that Google Home is only displaying the major version number and not the full one, so the current firmware version is 12141.430. That makes me less interested in manually installing .431 now. Thanks.
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Sorry @Tushar_das for having to correct You. No, version 431 is not available. I know, on Buchardt’s Google Drive it is advertised as ‘Demo firmware for hub version 431’. But in reality, after installing the update the web GUI of the stereo hub displays it as ‘Firmware Current: p12141.430.0’. The manual update was a two step process of 1st booting with the USB stick inserted and then 2nd the online update while carefully watching the LED flashing frequency.
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Yes @kwangomango, You are right. Google Home app only shows ‘12141’ while the Stereo hub’s web GUI displays the whole version string.
I have to thank You too. You lead me to switching from airplay to chromecast streaming. I totally ignored the fact chromecast audio is capable of 96/24 streaming. Should have known better 
To my knowledge 96/24 is the WiSA maximum anyways. So we won’t get higher sampling rates even with RAAT.
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Thanks for confirming @Morten_Poulsen. Me too after finally switching from airplay to chromecast streaming. Maybe I overlooked the ‘Roon Ready’ but uncertified and therefore disabled device in Roon’s audio settings before.
The stereo hub supposedly supports 192/24 but I think this just applies to the physical inputs. RAAT may have a different limit entirely.
Do you have any issues with Roon losing control of the hub on chromecast?
If you asked me yesterday I would had said no, but today I did a power cycle on the hub, but it is the first time, the led was flashing on the front, and Roon couldn’t find it.
It takes it a while to boot up!
Yes, but normally the hub is always ready in Roon, today it was flashing and not available😊
It’s not a limitation of RAAT. The Bandwidth of WiSA is limited to 24/96 per speaker.
The WISA transmission to the speakers is at 24/96 but the hub can accept a 24/192 input.
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Will the KEF stand designed for KEF LS50W work for A500? I have come across a pair of KEF stands and I intend to use for them for the A500’s …
I noticed a similar behavior of the stereo hub when it was losing wifi signal due to a scheduled downtime of my wifi access point the night before. Once actively reconnected through the wifi access point’s user interface, the flashing stopped and the stereo hub was working as expected.
Do Roon normally make an announcement regarding devices which have passed certification or do we just keep checking periodically?
Announcements are not the norm, except on the Roon Instagram feed, where occasionally there will be an announcement related to a particular manufacturer obtaining Roon Ready. Certifications are not announced/posted on this forum but they may be on the Roon blog (don’t know as I don’t read it very often and it is infrequently updated). That would be the place for it though (or Facebook?).
I would say you are better off asking the manufacturers, but given the behaviour of some of them I’m not so sure they can be trusted to tell the whole truth regarding Roon Ready status.
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Would any fellow A500 owners be kind enough to do some sound quality comparisons between Tidal/Qobuz streams through Roon and the native Qobuz and Tidal apps? Or better still Roon compared with the Audirvarna or BubbleUPNP streams of Tidal and Qobuz.
I have Roon set to stream losslessly with no DSPs yet it sounds noticeably brighter and louder to me than streaming via the other methods, all of which basically sound the same. At first it seems Roon has more clarity and space around the instruments and many instruments sound like they are in front of the speakers rather than behind like i hear with the other streaming methods. After listening for a while though i get a little listening fatigue and the clarity starts sounding like a digital glare.
Would be interested if anyone else hears similarly.
Brighter and louder may indicate digital clipping. I suggest you temporarily enable DSP->Headroom Management in Roon, set Headroom to 0dB, enable it and turn on the clipping indicator. Now you’ll be able to see if there’s any clipping.
Thanks, i gave that a go but the tracks aren’t indicating any clipping.
Having listened some more today i think what i’m dealing with here mostly boils down to loudness differences between the different casting methods to the Chromecast.
I’ve also just noticed that the physical presses on the Buchardt remote whilst casting Roon result in a volume increase/decrease of 3 in Roon, and not 1. This means two volume up presses on the Buchardt remote increases Roon’s volume by 6 and makes it too loud for me, hence the listening fatigue i’m experiencing. I’ll reach out to Buchardt/Hansong to see if anything can be done with the volume granularity. It would be good if other A500 owners could let me know they see the same volume behaviour.
Cheers.