Speakers in adjoining rooms

Roon Software Discussion
1

What’s the best way to set up speakers in adjoining rooms? Sometimes, we will play only one room, other times grouped. It is a pain to group and ungroup (and too hard for family members who are not proficient). Should I just leave them grouped and mute one as needed (or turn of)? I also thought of using the API to build a volume controller to mount on the wall - I think that could also group/ungroup.

One room has Dutch 8C as a roon endpoint and other will have KEF LS50 wireless fed USB from a ropieee. LS50 will have DSP in Roon.

3

Welcome to the community.

Have a look at the macro.on extension. It allows volume control as well as grouping and ungrouping so it might already meet your needs.

4

I use a Raspberry pi4 with Ropiee and Raspberry 7" display as an end point in another room. I can hit play or pause with the touch screen. Grouped or not.

Edit: I take that back. Pausing the endpoint stops all music when gouped I think.

5

If the Dutch and Dutch support Airplay then use that to group as zone for multiroom and use RAAT for individual playing. No need to ungroup then.

6

I do exactly this, have a 5.1.4 in my living room and a 2ch in the kitchen. The front speakers in the 5.1.4 setup and the 2 speakers in the kitchen are connected to the same stereo amp with A and B outputs. I can select A or B or both. The streamer and DAC connects to the stereo amp. And the AVR to the 2ch amp through Main In so I can use the same speakers in 5.1.4.

7

There is likely a trick you can probably use with macro.on (I’ve been meaning to do something similar with home assistant). I already do something similar.

Assuming you have an endpoint you’re not using (ideally not connected to anything) enable it in roon - call it something like ‘all’. Obviously playing music won’t do anything - but in macro.on you can detect it is playing - and so automatically group the other players.

Similarly you can ungroup when it stops.

1 Like
8

Right now, I’m leaving them grouped and manually turn off the pair that I don’t want to hear. Is there any advantage to ungrouping when I listen to just one?

If not, one option is sending commands via ethernet to the speakers. For on/off and volume and mute.

Another option is the Roon api.

I’m envisioning a wall panel with 2 sets of on/off button and volume knob.

9

If you never play different content to them, then the only disadvantage is using a bit more resource (network, roon core cpu) which shouldn’t be an issue.

With a grouped zone (depending on the endpoint, volume control method ) you can individually mute the outputs via the roon app.

If this appeals and doesn’t work - try using DSP volume

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/audio-setup-basics#:~:text=DSP%20Volume,that%20provides%20volume%20control%20natively.

10

Thanks. That helps. The rooms are close enough that we won’t play separately at the same time.

I do like a real volume knob. I’ll explore that in the API forum.