Why does roon not support any and all streamers?

I’m curious why have roon chosen not to make there software universally compatible to/with all streamers?

Is there some technical reason why this could not be applied to either DHCP or Fixed IP addresses and given a generic handshake?

Seems like the whole world streams music, yet roon limits its end users to the products they feel fit for purpose!

Regards,

CK

There are many technical reasons. See this for why Roon does it support Upnp which is the largest protocol out there for music streaming.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/whats-wrong-with-upnp/2101/3

There are many others out there and it gets difficult to support them all and they all have varying problems for what Roon wants to do hence they have developed and make available the RAAT protocol. See this for more on RAAT

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/whats-the-difference-raat-vs-airplay/6891/5

“Largest” …after Airplay, Sonos, and Chromecast. Seriously though, UPnP comes in so many half baked installs you cant even consider it largest for HiFi.

UPnP/DLNA is a wart on this industry, and if your device’s manufacturer has not moved on, you should.

6 Likes

OK - so putting uPnP to one side, why can’t roon work universally? why does it require a streamer to have a ‘handshake’ over ethernet/wifi?

These questions come from my recent purchase of an Audionet DNA 1. I get roon RAAT via USB Audio (ALSA) but do not get a network connection via ethernet. My current QNAP NAS runs roonserver and TIDAL from within roon, i then use USB Audio (ALSA) output and ethernet for streaming/input TIDAL. USB is RAAT whist ethernet isn’t showing as a device in ‘Audio’

In my Devialet system you have integrated Devialet AIR but still no RAAT via ethernet but again RAAT is available via USB audio

I’m just trying to understand the decision for not supporting universally (not the protocol used) as you’ve clearly shown you can via USB Audio?

How does that work without UPnP/DNLA? You can’t put it aside. It is the open protocol that universal products use and it isn’t very good!

The same way RAAT works over universal USB Audio 2.0 (ALSA)

Most devices out there implement the USB audio protocol, which is an official USB standard. There are a few devices that don’t and require drivers and/or custom support.

There is universality in USB and it is decent.

Can’t the same be achieved over ethernet?

No because the standards in use do not have the same levels of consistency as USB audio. RAAT creates the right conditions but you need to encourage others to include it. Perhaps the point to remember is even if Roon were to adopt a UPnP option there is no guarantee it would work well with other UPnP gear and supporting that would then be a nightmare.

There is a standard for streaming audio over IP – AES67 – which has gained a lot of traction in the pro audio world (and has been included in both the competing Dante and Ravenna protocols), but there’s pretty much nothing in the consumer world apart from the (RoonReady) Merging+NADAC.

1 Like

So with AES67 do today’s standard streamers need anything for them to work other than a player (roon for example) to output via AES67/IP?

@cereal_killer What do you mean by “standard streamer”?

Example being my two current streaming amps, a Devialet 220 pro and an Audionet DNA 1.

I hope you did not buy the Audionet amp because it has an ethernet connector and hoping it would work with Roon.
And I do not think RAAT has anything to do with USB. Asynchronous audio over USB is a standard within the USB specification. RAAT is an ethernet protocol.
You may be able to use the 220Pro with the Audionet apps as this is UPnP. If you have the CI installed in the 220Pro that is… the UPnP code is running on the CI.
AES67 is very good, but for some reason it is isolated in the pro segment. I believe Devialet had thoughts about implementing one of the pro protocols for Audio over IP as they showed a image of the CI board with an Audinate (makers of the Dante AoIP protocol) chip mounted. In the end the CI came with this chip omitted and Devialet displayed a dongle with ethernet in and TOSLINK out in stead, the “Dante dongle”

TBH I’m not that fussed about ethernet input as i seem to prefer USB (which roonremote says it is RAAT, click on the purple star) I tired USB and ethernet on the Devialet 220 Pro, again USB won.
I knew roon wouldn’t work over ethernet on the Audionet DNA 1… there’s been some chat on hear about it in the past. But USB Audio 2.0 (ALSA) is fully supported and works beautifully.
I have been looking into the Antipodes EX music server which also seems to prefer its USB Audio 2.0 output so could be the perfect partner for the Audionet DAN 1.

I’ve also been reading that Aurender have incorporated Ravenna into there latest updates:

February 2018 - Aurender go Ravenna - Aurender’s X100 Music Server will show at the Hamburger Hifi Tage connected directly to a Ravenna AoIP network to demo the advantages of Ethernet data distribution without USB’s length restrictions. Merging Technologies’ Ravenna protocol supports up to DSD256 and 32/384 PCM. This update will feature on Aurender’s A10, N10, N100 (N100C, N100H), X100L (X100S) and W20.

I take it they don’t support roon, yet?

Yes, Ravenna, Dante or AES67 would be good. There may be licensing involved but there is no doubt a standard AoIP protocol would make life easier for many of us. There is a but though… these protocols are strictly gigabit (or higher) ethernet, no wifi. Domestic users have too much wifi and would naturally expect AoIP to work. It wouldn’t. RAAT has the advantage of (being written to) working fairly stable over wifi which makes it very well suited to the consumer market.

Looks like Aurender have put themselves ahead of the game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenna_(networking)
https://www.ravenna-network.com/

The one significant downside of Ravenna (and presumably the other AES67 protocols) from a consumer perspective is that you need a managed switch (or switches) to prevent flooding of your home network with multicast traffic. That’s beyond most people.

Aurender seem to have cracked it!! There new firmware has incorporated Ravenna successfully.

I think Joel’s point was that using Ravenna or alternatives requires networking skills that most people will not have, regardless of whether the hardware supports it. RAAT works pretty well with a lot of products without that and newer hardware is getting the protocol as manufacturers see the benefit. If not, it works very well through low powered end points like a raspberry pi.