I have been using Roon for one year. My Roon core is on a NUC (i5) and running flawlessly. I have set up a multiroom using two of Rasberry Pi4 as Roon endpoints in two different areas of my apartment. The multiroom setup is running without any hassle. RPi4s are running: Volumio version 3.569.
I am considering adding a few more endpoints in my multiroom setup and considering buying a single box setup this time such as Sonos 5 or Denon Home 250. I am curious to know, whether either of these active speakers can be grouped with my existing Rasberry Pi4 based multiroom setup; or if Roon will treat these as separate zones.
I don’t think that you will be able to group Sonos Zones with your RPi4 endpoints. I see this in the KB article on Sonos:
Grouped Playback
Sonos Zones can be “grouped” to play the same content, but Sonos zones can only be grouped with other Sonos zones.
Also, Denon Zones are currently AirPlay zones. Once again, these can be grouped, but not with either Sonos or RAAT zones (Volumio has Roon Bridge, so your RPi4s are RAAT zones)
Volumio has an Airplay input which Roon should see. .
Sonos has the advantage of working with Roon via Sonos streaming or Airplay. The Denon only via Airplay without running RHEOS on a pi which will give you squeezebox support to its Heos UPnP input.
If you get Sonos then you can then group all zones using Airplay and keep them grouped. Use RAAT for the pis separately and Sonos for the Sonos separately. This means less messing grouping/ungrouping to get solo play. Your limited yo 44.1/16 when grouped not a major setback.
As per the shared help page, RAAT zones includes Roon Ready devices, i.e. Denon Home 350/250 and Sonons Five. Is that means, RPi4 endpoints (which runs on RAAT protocol as per my information) can be clubbed with these Roon Ready devices. Plz refer to attached image.
I also thought of the same solution but when I tried to group my HomePod mini with RPi4 based endpoint using Airplay (running on Volumio); I was surely able to group them but I always ended up with syncing problem. Either my HomePod mini or my RPi connected speakers are few mili-seconds un-synchronised.
If you can suggest a solution, that would be a great help.
Doesn’t quite answer the original question, but maybe look into one of Bluesound’s Pulse speakers? Price is about the same, and they are (at least when Bluesound updates do not break it) Roon Ready so they will group with RPi endpoints.
