Use Roon to stream music to Amazon Echo speaker

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This is now a complete reality with Roon + WiiM Pro + Echo Link. The last piece in the puzzle (for completeness) was the WiiM Pro getting Roon Ready certification. Before, it was working with with the WiiM via other means (I was using Chromecast), but now it’s certified. Of course, I don’t see why this wouldn’t work with any other streamer, but the WiiM is a pretty nice piece of kit and an affordable option.

This solution requires Roon, the WiiM Pro (streamer), and the Echo Link (redistribution). As of this writing the WiiM Pro Plus is out but is not yet Roon certified (imagine it will be).

  1. Connect the WiiM Pro to your network to serve as your streamer.
  2. Connect a WiiM Pro digital out to the Echo Link which also needs to be on your network.
  3. Using the WiiM app, pick Devices and Audio Settings
  4. I personally have these set to Fixed Volume Output at 2 Vrms and 192/24 on SPDIF (optical) and haven’t noted any issues. YMMV.
  5. In the Alexa App create a new Speaker Group (go to the bottom of the Devices page and tap on Combine Speakers)
  6. Select the Echo speakers you want to use with Roon AND the Echo Link and name your group.The Link needs to be in this group or this won’t work.
  7. In the Alexa App go into Devices and select the Echo Link.
  8. Select Line-In Distribution and pick the speaker group you just created.
  9. Open Roon and pick the WiiM, and set its options.
  10. MQA seems to be going away, but you can decide to let the WiiM handle MQA decoding or let your Roon server do it. I don’t think it much matters for what we’re doing here.

I prefer to control the volume level individually at each speaker so I set all the ins and outs to fixed across the whole chain. Just pick the WiiM as your output device in Roon and you are good to go.

Thanks to Mrmb and others above for finding this; it works great and is now a complete lossless chain until it hits your Echo speakers. The only hassle is switching which speakers you want to use, but you can always pick them all for the group and individually mute the ones you don’t feel like using at a given time.

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