Troubles getting Cocktail Audio X50 to work with Roon

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That can be a solution, yes, but what you’ll get is two different systems, with different libraries, different servers, different controllers. That will complicate your setup and user experience even more. What if you suddenly want to listen the music stored on your NAS with the X50?

You can use both storages (X50 and NAS) in both systems.

One configuration:

  1. Attach the NAS to X50’s library;
  2. X50 is now a player/server for all of your music. No ROON, no mac, no anything else is needed. You can play all your music on X50 system (with whatever gear you have after in your chain, preamplifier, amplifier and so on) or you can play all your music on whatever other system you have in the same network that can comunicate somehow with the X50 (which can act as a server too and can expose your now aggregated library to other devices)

So 1 and 2 are giving you all of your music to all your devices. Enjoy that for a few days, see how that works for you. Now, looks like you have an itch (JOKE) and you want to play with ROON. That’s ok, this is why big boys need to have big toys (JOKE AGAIN)! So:

Another configuration (it doesn’t make the first one obsolete, you can use both at the same time):
3. Install ROON server and remote on your MAC.
4. Attach your X50 and NAS storages as music folders for your ROON server (in library settings)
5. Set the audio stuff in audio settings, you should see there the X50 as a player, your MAC too and whatever other ROON ready component you have (or will) in your system.
6. Install ROON remote on your iPad (or android or windows tablet for example).

Now you can play all your music to all your ROON compatible devices using ROON server and ROON remote. The only downside it’s that you may (or may not for that matter) have network issues accessing the files stored on X50 and returning them to the same place. But you have to try in order to find out if that’s an issue or not.

The good of the computer audio is that once you’ve got it, you have a lot of configurations to play with (using the same gear). The bad is that it tends to be very complicated. I didn’t find the beauty (yet)!

Anyway, I strongly believe that the weakest spot in your configuration right now is the fact that you have the library in two different systems. Everything you’ll try is just a workaround to this problem.

Or you can use @Scott_Houston’s advice, for some reason I saw his post only after I’ve wrote mine. :blush:

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