Shield TV as Roon endpoint

Roon Software Discussion
1

Has anyone ever tried to set up an Nvidia Shield TV as a Roon endpoint?

The Shield is an extremely capable device. With Tidal and Qobuz paying attention to Shield TV and the android ecosystem of late, it would be nice to see Roon in on the action.

Cheers,
Rob

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2

I am sending music to mine as we speak. it shows up for me under “other network devices”… via Chromecast. It is feeding my Kef LS50W and my TV is the display.

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I could send the music straight to the Kef or to the RPi I have set-up also but this gives my a huge display for album art and the lyrics. Just need to enable it under Audio and displays I think, it’s been a while since I set this up…

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I also want to have a nice big display when playing music on my shield.

However, I also want to get around android’s inherent downsampling and chromecast’s audio quality limits.

If you could use RAAT to stream the music - and, I suppose some driver magic as tidal and usbapp have done - my thought is that would fix the audio quality and even enable mqa.

Perhaps someone from Roon will come in and tell us they’re working on it? :smiley:

4

They don’t say anything about much until it’s ready. Can’t see them doing a TV iteration it really wouldnt work well. Touch or mouse are really needed to work with Roon effectively Navigating the search and menus would be horrible via Android TV interface just like the music apps currently are. Even searching for TV content is a chore. It’s so much quicker to use a pc, tablet or phone.

5

I have also used the shield/TV as just a display. Play music to either either my main computer and Audioengine HD3s or the my RPi and the Kef LS50W and use the shield to display lyrics/album art.

Today my RPi has been acting up so I had it going to the shield over Chromecast. I don’t notice a huge difference in sound quality. Although I am not listening critically, more just background sound than a serious listening session.

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I looked into it a bit more and came here to say that it looks like I could do just that: display to shield with audio to my speakers, from…another computer :frowning:

  • I would also have to flip my AVR input so it displays the shield HDMI video but takes the audio from another source. Not the end of the world, but doesn’t make for a great user experience long-term.
  • I love my headphones, too. But as the headphone cables won’t reach to said “another computer” I would have to set up my laptop in the living room and plug my headphones in there. Again, could do it, but not a great long-term user experience.
    • Or, I could get yet another “another box” to handle my headphone use case :expressionless:

I’m at the point where I might just forego Roon (and it’s nice-to-have music discovery, organization, and information features). Instead, just use the Android/Android TV Tidal apps, the Android Qobuz app, and maybe re-combile/wrap a sideloaded Qobuz app for Android TV to see if I can get it to display correctly.

7

Also, CrystalGypsy: I don’t think the controls for a Shield Roon app would be an issue. Couple options:

a. Use the Shield remote control app. It has a touchpad, touch keyboard, and (I think?) a mic input.
b. Roon apps (including the Android mobile app) let you play your music, and set your displays, from/to another “zone.” I’m not sure a Roon Shield app wouldn’t even need control features.

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