Meridian 800 series USB doesn’t have volume possibility. I’m not even sure whether it would technically be possible to add it.
But somehow (bug? design?) the ID41 volume control remains active even when the source is not selected on the 8xx. So this means that one can watch a film from DVD and turn the 8xx volume down from Sooloos or Roon. And the same goes for USB. One can stream from Roon to the 8xx USB input, and then go to Roon ID41 zone and change the volume there.
So here’s an idea: leverage that possibility from Roon’s side to supply USB volume to these setups, automatically. The user would need to have some idea what he was doing enabling this, so shouldn’t be on by default, but seems to be possible and extreeeeeeeemely convenient…
Not sure if @brian would consider this legitimate or whether it’s too kludgy.
One of the features of the Roon API will be a way to plug in external volume control + source selection implementations.
That should make this integration possible, provided someone found it worthwhile to put the effort into building an adapter between our API and the Meridian gear.
This wouldn’t necessarily use the same protocol as the ID41, since those details aren’t public as far as I know, but Meridian boxes have other mechanisms for control, so I’m sure there is a way to get there.
So for instance you could have a Raspberry Pi with RAAT, S/PDIF and a serial port, then control source selection and volume via the Meridian controller serial port for a flexible replacement for the MS200?
With careful architecting you could have multiple transport front ends (RAAT, AirPlay) control selection and volume depending on which protocol is required.
Sorry, @Ludwig, I sort-of hijacked the conversation with a bit of a thought experiment following @brian’s response. I think a bit of a diagram and a new thread is in order. Suffice it to say that this could be potentially a very interesting bit of news for me.
