Route audio into Roon

Now that Roon has very powerful DSP features I would like to see an input into Roon to redirect virtual audio outputs (e.g. soundflower) from other programs into Roon than then are streamed to the Roon endpoints. This could resolve many needs of users that would like to use e.g. other streaming services to be able to apply the same signal path including filters, upsampling etc. for all computer audio needs. The same as for internet radio stations Roon would not be the source of the content, but the distributor with all its features. Technically, there should be no problem and also legally I cannot see that such a feature would be problematic. Airplay with its limited SQ could R.I.P. for rooners.

6 Likes

This has been talked about before, there is a thread somewhere about it. What I would suggest is that Roon exports the engine with DSP as a playback device, which you can set as Windows output default so all applications on the computer would automatically send their sound through Roon DSP engine (I don’t know if/how this would work in a Mac).

For room correction, this would make all audio sources room corrected, and not just music from Roon.

1 Like

Here is the other topic:

Has anybody tried ‘stream what you hear’ to send a stream to Roon ?
I used to use it to send audio from a windows pc to LMS on a vortexbox. The local URL it provided could be added as a tunein radio station in LMS.

Thanks Carl,
Could not find the topic. Many ideas and solutions were discussed. Among it, also the solution of a simple audio input selector that allows to choose any of the existing audio outputs of the device running the core. I agree with @Carl_Henrik_Janson that this should be quite straightforward to implement. The audio input could be chosen then like the Radio function instead of the play queue.

Problem here is that you need to provide virtual audio devices for all platforms Roon is running on. On some platforms it’s not as easy as it seams. Besides that the endpoints need to be capable of processing all the dsp features because people still would want upsampling to a buzillion gigahertz whenever that may become possible. This also means that there would be no advantage anymore of seperating the core and endpoints because the endpoints has become a heavy processing unit itself. There is a reason why Roon does all processing at the core. Zone syncing for one. Personaly I think it’s an odd request and I really hope the Roon team will focus way more time on improving the interface instead. I really get the felling the interface is becoming less important then all the audiophile mumbo jumbo while it’s far from.perfect at the moment. There are other dsp solution out there if you really want it. I’m using hardware dsp instead of Roon’s that simply works on anything you feed it. DSP is cheap nowadays. It’s part of the playback system not the main function of a software music player. It’s nice they provide it but don’t expect it to become a cure for everything. Before you know people will expect Roon to be a full-on active crossover with convolver correction per driver, room corrction and pre-amp all in one and that for multiple playback zones in sync. Not the main function of a music player. Keep improving the interface instead please. That’s what I have signed up for

I would love to route audio from online stream video like Berliner Digital Concert Hall, Video via Chromecast and Audio route to Roon.

Jriver have an audio driver installed into windows, so playback via this jriver driver will route back to Jriver to do post processing in Jriver and playable at final output audio device.

I agree, but on the other hand all versions or setups of Roon don’t have to be exactly equal in functionality. A functionality like this is primarily for using Roon on the computer, where the DSP/core functionality is executed on the same host.

I paid a subscription to Roon after the DSP was introduced. I like some of the UI in Roon, but I could honestly do without most of it, especially the “popularity” stuff like play count and ratings…
I would love to be able to stream TO Roon however. A lossless stream from a microRendu or a Pi over RAAT back to the Core would be nice. I do not play from a PC so local input would not help much.

Yes, I did try ‘stream what you hear’. It works, but is lossy and I never got it to sound decent. A minimum of 24/88.2 lossless would be good!

This is the one feature that keeps me from pulling the trigger on Roon. A virtual soundcard function that would stream external audio like sound cloud into Roon would make room the end all solution for how and what I listen to.

2 Likes

I ended up with a roundabout use case for this feature. I’d like to use TIDAL’s app instead of Roon because TIDAL has way better music discovery than Roon[1]. I get lots of value from Roon’s transport, which as far as I’m concerned is the best in the industry, but Roon wants to be constrained by my library (I don’t want it to) and Roon’s app UX is nowhere near as thoughtful as TIDAL’s desktop app.

If Roon could work with audio from OS audio inputs, I’d route TIDAL into Soundflower (https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower), which appears as an OS audio input (imagine another microphone device), and tell Roon to play that input. Obviously I’d lose song-level playlist control via Roon, but I’m ceding a fair amount of song-level control to dynamic radio/dynamic playlists anyway, so on balance I think I’d accept that tradeoff.

Totally understand that this would be a lot of work relative to the benefit and also somewhat platform-specific, so it’s unlikely to happen. I’m just documenting the use case on the off chance a product manager sees this thread.

[1]: Specifically, TIDAL’s recommendations use a much wider set of music (all music, not just my library/the relatively small part of the musical world that I’ve heard and favorited), and TIDAL supports dynamic track and artist radio using that far larger library. More (any) ways to discover/play music not in my Roon library has more. Ideally, Roon would add great music discovery, but the lack of official response on that topic, Roon’s ongoing focus on a manually-curated library, and of course the complexity of discovery/recommendations make that seem unlikely.