The Link by Stack Audio as Roon Endpoint?

Let us know if (when?) this streamer completes testing and is accepted as a Roon endpoint!

DarkoAudio mentioned this recently announced Volumio-based streamer (Ethernet or USB or Bluetooth in, USB out).

Design input from John Westlake (famous for Pro-ject StreamBox S2 Ultra and well-received products from Peachtree and Audiolab).

Shipping late January/early February? Pre-orders £695. Read more about how they try to reduce electrical noise, jitter, and susceptibility to vibration!
www.stackaudio.co.uk

@Lars_Backlund are you aware if the manufacturer offers an in home trial period? Products such as this should really warrant a trial period of 30 days for the consumer. Shiit does this. If the consumer chooses to return the unit there is a small restocking fee. Thats alot of clams to shell out to not hear the product in advance without a guarantee to return if not satisfied.

A little discussion here.

1 Like

Yes, the Preorder page states that there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Theo Stack will bump that piece of information to the main Link page.
I hope that no one will exploit this just in order to satisfy idle curiosity.

Fantastic, thanks @Lars_Backlund. I agree with you on the exploitation. Looks like a wonderful product and really like who had his hands in it for design. I do own the Pro-Ject S2 digital and absolutely love it. Looks as though The Link would be a great pairing in my setup.

I have had the Link now for a few days. It works fine as an ROON endpoint with RAAT, although it lists as ‘Uncertified’. The look and build is great. Massive aluminium ‘block’ around the electronic’s gives the impression of a completely vibration free and ‘sturdy’ construction. Sound wise it’s early days, but it’s clearly an improvement over my Bluesound Node 2 (as a streamer to an external dac). Full MQA (pass through) and DSD256.

Spotify has never allowed integration into Roon (there have been many threads on this subject in the past few years).

Spotify is easily accessed via smartphones, computers and certain DAPs, using their app. Most people accept the sound on offer.

Unfortunately, sound quality offered by Spotify is limited by the old method for bit reduction they still use. Even if you use a very good streamer such as The Link, sound quality is likely to be inferior to what TIDAL offers via Roon.

The Link is a Linux computer, well able to play Spotify using other programs than Roon, but not with the excellent Roon user interface.

If you want to delve into stuff like Volumio, mConnect and UpNP, you can make this work outside Roon/RAAT.

Using Windows, a clunky workaround was described by garym (see Tinkering).

Kind regards
Lars

Thank you Lars, for your kind advice. I am not very comfortable with IT and just wanted a system which works. I have not yet started using Roon as I want to get the hardware working first. Theo has contacted me now and is offering an explanation and very reasonable solution which I accept and so I have deleted my post. Thank you again for your explanation, I appreciate your having shared your time and knowledge.