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In Reply to: RE: Can someone comment on the SQ of ROON? posted by Isaak J. Garvey on June 08, 2017 at 18:03:46
I am a consumer, not a developer and do not claim to be an expert. That said, I am a lifetime subscriber to Roon and have been following its development since inception.
"Roon Ready" means the device (DAC or whatever) has an ethernet input and can function as an "endpoint" (player) for Roon without being attached to a computer. There aren't may of those yet: PS Audio, Auralic, Sonore, and SOtM are the early adopters. But iit's not a limitation - if you have a computer on the LAN running Roon, any device connected to that computer shows up as an endpoint. I have Roon running on a 2012 MacMini with a CI Audio Transporter connected by USB to the computer with analog output to my Ayon tube integrated amp. The CI Audio unit shows up in Roon as an endpopint by name, and the interface is seamless and sounds beauutiful.
I'm sure there will be others who jump on the bandwagon soon, but right now Roon is a harbinger of the future for consumers.who want better quality than mp3.
. . . in theory, practice and theory are the same; in practice, they are different . . .
Follow Ups:
Thank you. I understood well what the term Roon Ready meant in regards to a stand alone network streaming/file payer device, like, as you note, Sonore, Byrston etc. I own a Sonore mRendu and I love it.
What I was confused about was the term Roon Ready applied to a DAC. Now of course there are many streaming components with built in DACs, unlike the Sonore.
If I understood Mr. Hansen correctly, a DAC can be configured as a Roon end point with the inclusion of an Ethernet port I was surprised to hear this as I thought certain amount of computing horse power was needed to run Roon and other processes. But it seems not!
Maybe a bit more to it that that circuitry-wise, at least according to Paul McGowan as he discussed the 'Bridge II' option of his Direct Stream DAC at an audio meet-up I attended recently. That said, the 'Bridge II' is more than just a Roon end-point as I understand it (at $899 list, we would hope so).
But how much processor power does it take to be a Roon endpoint?
Not much, I'm guessing, as a $35 Raspberry Pi will do nicely.
But why just Roon?
Why not have an ethernet connection on all DACs and allow them to act as multiple endpoints like the uRendu?
No need for WiFi built in (not a fan of radios in audio myself), but perhaps a USB port on the back which would allow a WiFi adapter to be plugged in?
"But how much processor power does it take to be a Roon endpoint?"
Not a lot, but even tiny modern processors are pretty powerful. One can run Roon Bridge (end point software) on Linux with a Raspberry Pi which is essentially what Bryston has in the Bryston BDP-Pi. The Raspberry Pi is based on the ARM Cortex series processor.
microRendu also runs Roon Bridge on Linux on an ARM Cortex A9 based "System On a Module".
And anyone can load and run Roon Bridge on a Windows PC, Mac, or a Linux machine including a PC or small Raspberry Pi turning it into a Roon end-point.
https://kb.roonlabs.com/RoonBridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pid
https://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=160505
A DAC with an Ethernet port will still require a small 'computer' of sorts to accommodate protocols like Roon RAAT, UPNP / DLNA, squeezelite, etc.
Interesting questions.
How much processing power is required can be answered by Charley and others who are Roon partners.
I don't know of any Pi that runs Roon accept the Bryston BDP-Pi, which has a pretty decent processor on board.
I don't know of any Pi that runs Roon accept the Bryston BDP-Pi, which has a pretty decent processor on board.
It uses the latest Pi3 as do most of us.
Is a gigaflop enough horsepower? Good question.
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