Ropieee on Raspberry Pi 4 vs an old iPhone for Roon endpoint

Audio Gear Talk RoPieee
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Hi everybody,

I actually use an iPhone 8 Plus as Roon endpoint that ends with my Dac (Chord Mojo).

I am thinking to buy another iPhone (older, say 6s or SE), so I could leave it on place doing it’s job of Roon’s endpoint (in fact, actually, I cannot use my 8 Plus while is playing for Roon).

Before I pull the trigger, do you “think” that I should consider to buy a Pi 4 (with Ropieee inside) instead of that iOS device? I mean about sound quality.

The cost, I guess, should be very close (for an old iPhone (6s or SE) or the Pi 4).

Thanks a lot

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I use a Pi 4 in the main system and I’ve recently ordered another for headfi duty as well. After some careful long time listening trials I decided the Pi 4 knocked the socks off my iPhone X, its not that the phone was bad, very good actually, but the little Pi is so cost effective and listening to classical I just found it more reliably revealing and delicately detailed. The iPhone ‘could’ sound quite good, but also could sound barely OK. I suppose that might depend on whatever else it might be doing at the time - busy things iPhones - even in airplane mode! Whereas the Pi just does one thing, sitting there looking cool on my bedside table and streaming Roon, and I have to say it sounds amazing into my Mojo and HD600’s! :blush:

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Could you explain exactly your setup on the Pi 4?

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Just a plain vanilla Pi 4, in Flirc case with Ropiee installed on the micro SD card, USB out to Mojo. I did go crazy and update my stock out of the box USB cable for an Audioquest Pearl basic £25 job and liked it.

*Edit: 1Gb no need for any more RAM + standard Pi power supply.

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I recommend the Raspberry Pi 4 also. I assembled mine for $74 including the 1GB Pi with 16GB SanDisk, FLIRC case, and power supply, all from Amazon. I am using USB out to a Meridian Prime and Sony headphones. I use ethernet in for best results.

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Should the Pi 4 have the same wifi receiver strenght as the iPhone according to you?

Room is far from router although I never had issues of wifi even for DSD.

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That I don’t know. Might depend on what case you put it in.

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Same as the iPhone here, although when I was using that as an endpoint I did have to extend the network into my bedroom when I upgraded to Roon Rock on a NUC as I was getting complete drops, occasional ‘cannot connect’ messages. Roon is far more demanding on the network if it isn’t running on the listening device, far more than just playing say Qobuz to the Mojo anyway, lots of data going back and forth. I have Apple network stuff and Roon apparently isn’t all that fond of it!

Still I had a spare Airport Express so I plugged that into a socket and configured it to ‘extend the wifi network’ which it did remarkably well and I have had no dropouts since. Until then I was getting problems using my MacBook or phone or the Pi whichever, they all had issues.

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