Hi,
Is there a Marantz Amplifier that is Roon Ready?
Kind Regards
Shaun
Hi All
any update on where we are ? I have a marantz Sacd30n and awaiting roon ready certification. At the moment I use mac mi ni or Zen ifi stream but native integration would be great.
Do you have any indication that Denon / Marantz is trying to get certification? I had thought/assumed they were hard-locked on the HEOS ecosystem, and were happy to provide chromecast/Airplay connections and that was it. But I don’t pay that much attention to what Denon is up to - I’m happy when I have a party in my AV room to use Spotify connect or Roon via Airplay. All my other endpoints have more “proper streamers”.
Marantz appears to be satisfied with Roon Tested as they have a long list of products with that designation, including the SACD 30n. I can’t imagine that HEOS is a hinderance to becoming Roon Ready as the extremely basic HEOS is non-competitive with Roon. I speculate that Marantz simply doesn’t want to go through the Rood Ready hoops.
Maybe the Marantz Sacd30n works with rooextend / rooupnp. My SR5014 does! I have rooupnp running on a Raspberry pi somewhere in the network. It pushes music from roon in full quality (Qobuz or from NAS) to de AVR. The signalpath is intact, and the music is handled by the dac in the AVR. Kind of like mconnect works…
I currently use a Zen FI streamer as a roon end point with a USB link into the Sacd30n. It sounded good but recently been using my mac mini m1 running roon core directly into the Sacd30n via USB. Sounds a bit better.
I’ve been using the ZenStream as a HQPlayer NAA with my SACD 30n to utilize Roon. I’ve been a very long ways around the bush trying to get that to sound as good, or better than the 30n’s physical disc playing. Adding a Farad Super3 LPS to the ZenStream, along with a Curious Evolved USB going into a Wyred4Sound Recovery (USB reclocker - also powered by a Farad) into the 30n has finally surpassed the 30n’s disc playing skills. For me, a Mac Mini feeding the 30n directly via USB was not as good as physical media.
hi there, can you provide me a bit more details on your setup? Whats Wyred4Sound?
@Ravikumar_Sanjay_Mut
Well, that’s a rabbit hole for sure.
There are those who believe that a consumer grade computer is inherently noisy. And that USB is a mode of signal transmission ill suited for audio. There are a number of schemes designed to mitigate those perceived limitations.
This is in part why people use streamers, to create a buffer between the computer and the DAC. Another approach is to re-clock and otherwise rehabilitate the USB signal prior to entering the DAC. Innuos makes a very expensive USB rehab device costing some $4000 or so. SOTM has one in the $1000 to $1200 range. Ideon ($300 or so), iFi ($400? theirs is discontinued), and Wyred4Sound ($199) make less expensive USB re-clocking gizmos. I’ve only ever tried the Wyred4Sound Recovery, thus cannot comment on the others. Intona makes another, though I believe it’s centered on galvanic isolation. Matrix Audio (and others) make boxes to re-clock and convert USB into something else like optical, I2S and coax.
All are schemes to mitigate the ills of computers and USB.
I can say that with the ZS and W4S RUR (Recovery) powered by a Farad Super3, and with a Curious Evolved USB cable that I’m getting the best sound I’ve ever had out of Roon/HQP. It is my belief that the USB re-clocking is extremely important to that equation, especially when using a consumer computer as a music server (I use a 2021 M1 MacMini).
I find that the W4S Recovery (using the short and inexpensive Uptone Audio USB dongle) expands the soundstage dramatically and creates a more natural tone that’s more in line with physical media. Granted, it’s not the Recovery all by itself, it’s all of the other stuff as well, the Curious, the ZS, the Farad, etc.
There is some wisdom to forgoing all of the little gizmos and buy a high end music server instead, like an Aurender, Innuos, et al. If nothing else it’s a much cleaner look than a pile of gizmos, and in theory, those companies are incorporating low noise and USB rehabilitation into their designs. At their prices, it’s the least we can ask.
But alas, I seem to not be able to resist tinkering, and hence I have a pile of gizmos.
This experiment illustrates, at least for me, the ills of computer noise.
Using an Audio Art coax cable (great cable!) I listened to a playlist of Tidal 16/44 tracks - not audiophile stuff, but well recorded. One way was using Roon/HQP on a M1 Mac Mini via the ZenStream. The other was using Tidal Connect on the ZenStream with no computer involved.
The sound quality via Tidal Connect was absolutely superior. More natural, larger soundstage. I attribute this to the ZenStream having much lower noise than the Mac Mini.
The same Tidal playlist run via Curious Evolved USB to the Wyred4Sound Recovery (which reclocks the USB signal) was actually nearly equal, and perhaps a bit better with Roon/HQP than via Tidal Connect.
Such are the ills of computer noise.
Away from home, I use my Dell laptop running Roon. USB out of the Dell was problematic, so I use a Raspberry Pi4 running RoPieeeXL connected by WIFI from my Dell. The DAC is a Chord Mojo 2 connected to the RPi4 by USB with Focal Clear headphones. Excellent SQ at reasonable cost. I use a AQ Cinnamon USB cable and Moon Audio Black Dragon headphone cable.
I also have an HDMI solution out of the Dell, but I rarely use it.