I’ve got Roon setup on a headless Mac mini, which is connected by USB to my DAC (Playback Designs MPS5), which in turn is connected to my hifi.
It would be great if I could have that send music wirelessly to my terrace, possibly over wifi. I’ve got electrical power outlets available.
Does anyone know of active (powered) speakers that can work wirelessly like that? I do not want to setup amps and so on. This is really for background music.
Any Airplay enabled speakers that can connect to your WiFi will do the job – see for instance Bowers & Wilkins. Lots of alternatives too.
I use a B+W A7 for this kind of stuff. I use it outside frequently (only wish it were weatherproof so I didn’t have to bring it in after…).
Works great over AirPlay.
Just as an update, thanks to the comments, I remembered having an unused Zeppelin Air lying somewhere. Got it out, configured, hooked it up and off it goes! Roon sees it and on a good day, all is fine. The problem is most of the time, the Zeppelin has severe dropouts, which makes listening a chore rather than a pleasure. Also, every time the power goes (which is frequent where I live), I need to reconfigure the Zeppelin, which is a pain. This reminded me why the Zeppelin remained unused for a long time …
Is that (dropouts) typical of the Zeppelin or do I need to do something with the router. Everything is located pretty close and the Zeppelin should be getting full wifi signal.
do you have something else you can check your wifi reception with (ie an android tablet you can use to have the roon app stream) in the zeppeling location. Nothing as annoying as buying something new and finding the same issue.
I would put a apple airport express up there and plug the speakers into that. I’ve used the Airport Express and Apple TVs in hundreds of wireless setups.
Well, after a couple of weeks of this, I am definitely not happy at the Zeppelin. It plays music, but often has a lot of dropouts. It also drops ‘out of sight’, i.e. airplay no longer ‘sees’ it and I have to go through the setup wifi rigmarole again. I’m at a loss to explain why this happens. Sometimes it plays for a couple of hours, then drops out. other times, it keeps dropping signal or itself.
Surely there must be some more reliable way of doing this !
Sorry to dig up and old topic, but it seemed a bit pointless to start a new one to ask the same question….
I wanted to add a network speaker to my kitchen and bedroom. Having always kind of thought about this in terms of when RoonSpeakers finally came out, I completely overlooked the fact that I can just use something like an Airplay speaker now.
So just wondered if there are any currently in use that seem to be working well with Roon. Sounding good would be a bonus too.
I don’t want to go crazy expensive, don’t want it to be too big, and don’t want it to look ugly/computery. I know I should really wait for more RoonReady devices or RoonSpeakers, but I sort of just want something now - at least in one of the rooms. I’ve seen the B&W mentioned a few times, and I thought the new Naim Muso Qb might work for the bedroom. Any other recommendations?
As it currently stands, I think I read somewhere than I can only zone things together via transport mechanism - i…e both Airpplay devices would have to be the same zone?
Same question asked elsewhere in Roon community!
Can I ask anyone done SQ check of Zeppelin Vs MuSo Qb / Muso
I’ve got both the Muso and the Zeppelin. I prefer the Muso, both form an ergonomic and SQ point of view, but, to be fair to the Zeppelin, the Muso is significantly more expensive and so you’d expect it to be better.
Btw, since my post 2 years ago, software upgrades to the Zeppelin have resolved all dropout glitches. It now operates perfectly.
Thanks for your assessment. I did audition of Muso QB, Zepplin, Play5 (sonos), Pulse2 (Bluesound) couple of months ago and wanted to check what others felt. Sorry for not exposing my own findings.
This is my opinion only. I narrowed to Muso Qz and Zepplin. But if Muso is better than Qb, then its ON too.
Muso Qb has better better SQ than Play5 and Pluse2. Obviously Play5/Pulse2 has best connectivity (so I believe). I did not like Play5/Pulse2 SQ.
However Zepplin was much better from all 4. But i was told it has sucky connectivity etc. I played BT and it played really well. If I have to use it on Roon, then question between Muso Vs Zepplin, I choose Muso/Qb for Roon-able, although I like Zepplin.
Thanks for confirming Zepplin has improved software, thats helpful. Can you confirm if you can find Zepplin on Roon through Airplay?
Yes, no problem. I have Roon running on a dedicated Mac Mini and can stream anything from there to the Zeppelin via Airplay. I’ve used the Zeppelin on the outside deck all summer without any glitch or dropout issues, though you should know that the distance between the Mac mini and the Zeppelin was only a few meters. Also, no problem in reconnecting when I unplug the Zeppelin due to the occasional rain.