According to my Roon Server, my Bluesound Pulse Flex 2i speaker is “Roon Ready.”
Yes I already said Bluesound speakers are.
There are wireless RAAT speakers from Elac, B&W and Bluesound. KEF LS50w and LSX are Roon tested which don’t use RAAT but can be streamed to and controlled by Roon. Any Chromecast or airplay enabled speaker can also be used. That’s all the ones I know of.
KEF LSX work well for me
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Thanks everyone for showing the power of the Roon Community - lots of great information.
Nonetheless all this information should be incorporated into the Roon Knowledge Base, as I requested in my original post.
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I have KEF LSX and really like them. And from my own experience, I’d suggest that AirPlay and ChromeCast etc. be considered fallbacks. The Roon protocol, at least on these speakers, sounds better.
I’ve listened to some things via AirPlay, and then via the Roon protocol, and yes indeed there are audible differences. Partially because of AirPlay’s bit and sample rate limitations, but even 16/44 sounded better with the Roon protocol. Greater imaging depth and width.
Whether it’s because of something KEF built into the Roon receiving code on their end, or because of something unique about RAAT, whichever (maybe both) there’s a difference and it’s not subtle.
I’m curious about whether this is true with other powered speakers, but not curious enough to spend my own money finding it out. I HAVE tested AirPlay versus RAAT on two of my other systems - one is an Exasound e22 dac with their Sigma streamer in front, the other an Auralic Aries Mini - and on both of them, the differences were easy to notice. Again, RAAT seemed to have more presence and better imaging.
What do I mean by not subtle? One of the tracks I tried on the Exasound system had a dog barking in the distance in the mix. My two Australian Shepherds slept through the AirPlay, but when I’d switched to RAAT and the dog bark hit, BOTH of them shot up and raced to the right speaker… and then stood there looking puzzled because, speaker, no dog.
I’m sure that there may be some speakers where this isn’t how it is. I’ve got a couple of small systems in guest rooms or workstations where I can’t tell 24/96 from 16/44, much less Roon vs AirPlay.
The moment the LSXs became Airplay 2 ready I immediately switched to it. I have Tidal and Qobuz (don’t ask!) and I love my LSXs (but not as much as my LS50Ws). I have now just seen that the LSXs have won the award for Best Product for ‘Wireless Stereo Speaker’ 2019-2020 at the EISA Awards, and I wondered if I had the same speakers? If they retail for about £1000 then through Airplay2 they are worth about £300-400 and easily double that amount played directly via Roon.
Now I’m totally confused. Are you saying that when using the LSX with Airplay 2 versus using the LSX with RAAT there is enough of a clearly audible difference to make the speakers worth less money?
As per this link: Airplay
Which explains some of the differences between Airplay 2 and RAAT and which does not mention any audible differences only important differences in the streaming protocols and the like.
I also understand that the maximum bit rate and sample frequency is much higher when using RAAT but as far as I can tell airplay 2 does allow for 16bit/44.1kHz streaming. Claiming that using, for example, a full 24bit/96kHz stream over RAAT versus using a down sampled 16bit/44.1kHz stream over Airplay 2 results in a clear audible difference without a carefully conducted listening test is not quite fair.
Now having said that if I had the choice of using RAAT instead of Airplay 2 I would most definitely use RAAT because of all the other advantages of the RAAT protocol.
Full disclosure:
At present none of the many Roon endpoints throughout my house use RAAT, these endpoints use (as identified under the “Audio” setting screen) either the Chromecast, Airplay or Squeezebox streaming protocols - and they all sound great! Again which doesn’t mean that some of the issues that I experience when streaming hi rez (24bit/96kHz) via WiFi to a Squeezebox Touch, like audible dropouts, would not be there if I was streaming to an endpoint at uses RAAT. However using the SB Touch with a wired Ethernet results in issue free playback of a hi rez stream (as is clearly stated in the Roon Knowledge Base).
Using Roon the Source goes straight to the LSX i.e. a ‘purple’ dot With Airplay 2 everything is downsampled i.e. ‘green’ dot.
LSX don’t use RAAT.
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Just checking if I mentioned RAAT - nope.
https://kb.roonlabs.com/Partner_Devices_Matrix
P.S. Of course they won’t play FLAC 192kHz, 24bit Qobuz files, but will play TIDAL MQA 192kHz (‘cos the FLAC files are ?48kHz). When the speakers are interconnected with an ethernet cable they won’t play FLAC files >96 kHz.
Do you have LSX speakers? If you don’t, do not weigh in because you’re creating misleading noise.
I do own them. They show up as a Roon endpoint, in addition to being an AirPlay endpoint. I have listened to my LSX from Roon as an AirPlay endpoint, and as a Roon (compatible) endpoint. (Roon Ready requires certification that takes time and a bunch of other hoops, and KEF was in a hurry.) Listening to them as a Roon endpoint they sound much better than as an AirPlay endpoint.
I’ve got a couple of Logitech Transporters and Roon makes them sound as good, maybe a hair better, than Logitech’s own server app. Honestly, those old Transporters sound better than a couple of modern DACs I’ve auditioned.
To be fair, many people can’t tell the difference between 16/44 and 24/96. No more of a knock on them than a knock on me because I can’t run a half marathon, nor can I taste a wine and tell you which grapes, what year, and which vineyards. (I have friends who can do that with way over 90% accuracy.) I don’t envy my wine expert friends (doesn’t stop me from loving wine) and I don’t look down on those who can’t distinguish between DACs or sampling rates. We are who we are.
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What do you think is going on here then? Not AirPlay endpoints because I’ve not enabled them.
You do not have to be Roon certified to be a Roon endpoint.
I’m not saying it doesnt sound better I’m saying they don’t use RAAT because they don’t they work with Kefs own protocol. Saying they do is misleading. Roon Ready and Roon tested are not the same thing. I suggest you research things properly.
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Bluesound offers some great sounding wireless speakers that are roon ready.
I almost bought some LSXs before I noticed they don’t support 802.11ac. 802.11n is the most recent standard they support. There is no way I am about to spend £1,000 on a product that uses an almost obsolete 10 year old wifi standard, when every other wifi speaker vendor uses 802.11ac. It’s strange that KEF’s FAQ tells you to use a router with a minimum of 1300Mbps when their products only support 300Mbps.
At least the LSX supports 5 GHz wireless. The Bluesound “2i” speakers don’t even do that. 2.4 only, which is just plain sad for a speaker released in 2019. Curiously, the spec sheet says they support 802.11ac, but I just did a job with four of them that were ordered new from Bluesound and the 5GHz network doesn’t even show up as an option during set up. And with the Bluesound if you do any timeline scrubbing or skip multiple tracks in a row they tend to cut out or drop off line. The Bluesound Wi-Fi is pretty much a crapshoot at best. Super disappointing. I got frustrated with a Pulse 2i and hooked it up to a Netgear EX7000 Wi-Fi extender and it works 10x better.
The Elac has no spec at all, it could be 802.11b for all we know. Never used one so I’m not sure how well they work or sound.
The B&W Formation line also has no published spec, but will connect @ 5GHz. And the Wedge just plain sounds bad, which is crazy bc the Formation Duo sounds fantastic.
I thought they weren’t available yet but that would be awesome
The closest I came if built in speaker is needed
Not really. I have a lot of trouble with BlueSound
Crackles and disruption with Roon and BlueSound (Flex2i, Node 2i)