Roon don’t find Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 earbuds as a separate audio zone, (which worked quite well a month ago:). All I am getting when the FreeBuds are connected, is either my Mac, or my iPhone. So I am getting the sound through one of my devices, but not directly through the FreeBuds, and the sound quality this way is far from ideal. A'll be glad to be able to solve that. Thanks
To clarify, Roon does not support Bluetooth audio devices as standalone audio zones. When your Huawei FreeBuds Pro 4 are connected via Bluetooth to your iPhone or Mac, Roon cannot recognize the earbuds themselves as an individual endpoint. Instead, the system audio output from your Mac or iPhone is what Roon uses.
This means:
The audio is processed and sent via your iPhone or Mac’s audio subsystem.
Roon cannot directly control or optimize the output for your FreeBuds over Bluetooth.
This may result in lower sound quality, especially compared to Roon Ready or RAAT-compatible endpoints.
Additionally, Bluetooth audio typically uses protocols like A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) for stereo audio. These protocols are designed for simplicity and general compatibility, but they don’t provide the same level of audio quality or control that dedicated Roon zones (like those using RAAT) can offer.
Unfortunately, due to Bluetooth and iOS/macOS system limitations, Roon has no visibility into or direct connection with Bluetooth headphones as separate zones.
Please share the screenshot of the “Signal path” from one of your devices during playback to help us diagnose any issues with sound quality degradation.
Thanks for the screenshot, this shows output using the OS Mixer. Just to confirm, if you navigate to Roon Settings → Audio, you don’t see any other outputs listed there? I noticed your Roon Server is not on the Mac, so perhaps this could be an issue with the Mac blocking the connectivity.
Can you please navigate to macOS System Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network , and make sure Roon is allowed. If it is already enabled, toggle it off and on again. Then reboot your Mac, and see if the same issue persists.
As @vadim has mentioned above, you’ll need to connect the Bluetooth buds to your remote device you’re using Roon with, and then set the audio output in Roon to the system output of the remote device. This should allow you to playback audio on your buds .
that’s what I exactly do. The problem is that the ONLY related output I see in the “Audio” settings of ROON is “My Mac”. That’s it and then this signal path crashes badly in the “OS Mixer”
The Mac (or ROON) doesn’t seem to separate its internal speakers from the Bluetooth buds, like in Audirvana screenshot in my previous post.
I just tested the behavior you described using a similar setup on my end — with both default speakers and a Bluetooth headset connected to macOS.
When I play audio to the System Output (labeled as “Mac” in your screenshot), the sound is routed to the Bluetooth headset. After that, I enabled MacBook Speakers as a separate output device, and I was able to play sound through the internal speakers. In your screenshot, this output is labeled “MacBook Air Speakers.”
Could you please try enabling this output device and see if the behavior is the same on your side?
Since the detection of the exact device connected by BT is not a current feature of Roon, I would recommend also posting your suggestion in the Feature Suggestions section of the site.
Our product team and developers keep a close eye on that category, so that’s definitely the best place to propose a change like this and get feedback from the Community.
What is the selected output in your Mac Sound Settings for the above configuration? Roon is routing audio to the Apple coreaudio daemon, but the actual output for the chain will be whatever you’ve configured in your Mac settings.
