I have been playing around with Roon, and using an old iPhone 6 as an endpoint for one of my amps.
It’s been a really good experiment, and I am now looking for suggestions on how to add Roon endpoints to the rest of my Yamaha Amplifiers.
This is a multi room setup.
1 x Yamaha WXA-50 for in ceiling speakers
1 x Yamaha WXA-50 for outdoor speakers
1 x Yamaha RXV-1085 for the home theatre
These are the main zones that I would like to control.
But, as a bonus, there are also 3 more Amps and speakers around the property that would be nice to have Roon on in the future. (Two Yamaha, one Denon).
The Roon server is on a large Synology NAS, and it is networked nicely throughout to every amp via a good cat6 Ubiquiti network.
Looking for suggestions on ways to add endpoints that are not too expensive, as they are just in ceiling speakers etc… but at the same time, we like to listen to quality music, and the speakers are all Monitor Audio, and we mostly are listening to FLAC and Tidal.
All your Yamaha amps support Airplay. So you can as a starting point use Airplay and need no other new devcies. If the amps are in the same network as your Roon core you only need to enable the Airplay devices in Roon (Settings->Audio). And in one minute you have your multi room setup running.
I am familiar with Airplay, and have played around with it. But, I would prefer a more robust solution.
Airplay is not ideal with iPhone notifications going off etc.
We have had a successful multiroom running for the past 18 month. It’s just that using it through the Yamaha Musiccast app is not ideal. (The app is terrible).
We had Spotify Connect working nicely as well. But then, I discovered Tidal… and ditched Spotify.
It really would be ideal if Yamaha came to the party and added Roon support. (But, I understand that that is not likely judging by the replies on a Facebook forum). (… would be curious to know… did anyone from Roon reach out directly to Yamaha?)
So, I am guessing that I would need to plug something into the Yamaha amps to have the best result. (The iphone 6 test was a great success. Should I just get some more old iPhones or iPods? and if so, what is the best way to connect them?) Or, something else?
If they do you could try a raspberry pi with USB audio and a distro like Ropiee, DietPi or VitOS and they all work well, this would give you a Roon Endpoint directly into your amps.
If not you could try one of the audio hats (I have a hifiberry Digi+ pro with toslink and coaxial on it), others are available at a low cost and can drive analogue if you need that.
Plenty of threads on the subject here and plenty of people who understand this well to offer help.
You don’t need your iPhone for Airplay with Roon. The Roon Core can communicate via airplay directly with your amps. You only need to activate it in the Roon settings. Try it.
Ben that is correct, Roon can internally talk to different protocols including Sonos, Airplay and Chromecast as well as Linn. The Roon server would do all this work, so depending what protocols your Amps provide you can make use of these.
Only thing to bear in mind is that if you want to group the zones, they all have to talk the same protocol.
Roon manages airplay it doesn’t go through the phone at all so you don’t get notifications just a pure audio 44.1/16 stream over the network.
If you want to have higher resolution playback then I can recommend the Wiim Pro Plus to use as a roon endpoint connected to the amplifiers line in using either Squeezebox streaming or Chromecast, it’s not Roon Ready yet but will get there soon. If your amps have an inbuilt DAC that takes optical or coaxial inputs then the Wiim pro would be a good choice this is fully Roon Ready, if no DAC then the Wiim Pro Plus as I suggested as it has a much better analogue outputs stage. These devices offer so much to for little outlay and their own software is very good. They are way more flexible than any pi solution and work out of the box.
Like John I would go for the RPI with Hifi Berry Hats.
Its really easy to get this working, they come in different kinds of HATS, be it analogue or digital.
I have three running: One via coax to an old Denon AvR 3806 receiver, one via analogue to an old Harman Cardon 6350 amplifier, and one for my old Sennheiser HD430 Headphone. The advantage is that you stick with the same RAAT protocoll.
As suggested I went down the RPi4 and HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro route, however first major issue is volume control in the Yamahas! There isn’t any it just says “fixed volume”
I was hoping to use the devices volume control and not DSP, is it possible if they are in a network rack and not accessible?
I don’t have a Yamaha amp, but I have a mix of other amp setups in different rooms, all using the Deep Harmony extension with logitech harmony IR controllers. Unfortunately Logitech axed harmony though so unless you already have this setup it’s not something you can do now… there must be other comparable IR controllers though?
No you can’t control volume of the amp via these connection methods only streaming protocol like Airplay or Chromecast or if it was Roon Ready has access to the amplifiers pre amp controls.
The same would be for any external device these connections have no such control to do so unless they have an addition remote trigger to connect and turn on the amp.
I would look into using Ropiee on the pi enable the UPnP Bridge it has and it might work bridging your Yamahas over the network to Roon using the Squeezebox support if the Yamaha supports UPnP/DNLA this will then trigger the amp to come on and possibly allow volume control.
I have a Project Pre Box S2 Digital Pre Amp DAC hooked up to my Yamaha amp via RPI and thru Roon I can control the volume if I do not in Roon set the volume to “Fixed”, turn off the Sample Rate Conversion and I can use Roon volume control to control the DAC volume hooked to the Yamaha.
Like you said this is not the Yamaha volume control but I have a DAC volume control. I set the Yamaha volume about half way up and I can control the volume from Roon.
