HowTo: Roonify non-Roon streamers (lms-to-uPnP)

Simon could you elaborate please?
I’m looking at Roon again with my NDS / 52 setup. It seems my Qnaps are too old to run Roon, or at least I can’t find the pkg in the entertainment section. But I’ve a Apple TV into my tv, and the latter feeds into my 52. (I had followed your RPi discussion as an alternative, but I Hope AirPlay is a better solution.)
Thanks

Airplay in Roon is not considered lossless due to the fact that some Apple products will upscale all 44.1 to 48. I would also say its not the best way to hear Roon it did not sound as good as RAAT or ChromeCast on the Atom. Their Chromecast implementation is way better IMO, but would require a ChromeCast Audio to add it.

Which QNAP do you have?

My main QNAP is a TS 412
My second one is TS 231

You need an Intel based NAS with more RAM than you have so you cannot run Roon on either of them unfortunately.

It is well worth the effort though to get this working and obtain the necessary hardware. It didn’t take long to convince me to become a lifetime subscriber.

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That is what I feared … even before I try to link up my legacy NAS

You can use either an Airport Express or a Chromecast Audio as a Roon Endpoint, and connect it to your streamer or DAC via Toslink. It’s probably the cheapest and easiest way to add Roon to any device that doesn’t have support built in. Having played around a little with both these options, my impressions are that CCA sounds a bit better than AirPlay, but neither are as good as regular UPnP streaming into my NDX.
Also, for anyone who wants to use Roon multiroom, you cannot sync a mixture of AirPlay, CCA and Roon endpoints. They all have to be the same.

Thanks ChrisSU … seems to me that Roon is a dead end for me as I don’t intend to upgrade any of my legacy endpoints.

Take a look at this.


I have the SonoreUPnP Bridge running as an Roon Endpoint into my NDS, supporting formats upto 24/192 and DSD64. All formats higher (when available) Roon down converts.

Is this what you refer to above?
The Sonore UPnP Bridge (and LMS-to-UPnP) is a great idea but, at this point in time, is poorly executed

I have it running on an UltraRendu with UltraCap LPS 1 PSU, and works absolutely for me.
Never have to reboot it, no skipping, no break in playback.

There was some issues when it was first released, and on the SonicOrbiterSE device, but since SonicOrbiterOS 2.5, it has been fine into an NDS Network player, with Roon and Roon Remotes.

Now the DIY task of taking the LMS-to-UPnP Library and getting that to run, maybe that’s a different task, or if you are using a Streaming Pre-Amp.

One can easily turn an Allo DigiOne (or DigiOne Signature) transport in an Airplay device by installing shairport-sync on the RPi that hosts the DigiOne.

It works out of the box and runs nicely alongside other services like MinimServer, upmpdcli, etc.

But if you run a Roon endpoint on the UltraRendu you will still need a USB to S/PDIF interface to connect to the NDS, right?

The appeal of Roon endpoints with high quality S/PDIF outputs is that one does not need any additional boxes to feed an NDS or a nDAC.

You dont need airplay to get Roon with Allo DigiOne though you can use Roon bridge on it to get full fat RAAT.

No, I can take a USB output, but the UltraRendu also runs the SonoreUPnP Bridge, which provides a Roon Endpoint to the NDS over the Ethernet input, as a UPnP stream.
Thereby removing the requirement for any form of packet stream to S/PDIF conversion, and the potential horrors that could introduce.

Sure, I haven’t argued that one needs Airplay to use Roon with the DigiOne. I have just pointed out that one can add to a DigiOne the capability of acting as an Airplay to S/PDIF transport.

The nice thing about shairport-sync is that it runs alongside other services and can be stopped and started at any time.

I think you need to be careful what you are connecting to a streamer of the level of the NDS.

Only a year ago this was Naims top streamer, used to front their statement system. It is a very high end UPNP streamer despite the fact that the ND555 has overtaken it.

Unless the alternative transport being used to feed the SPDIF is of extremely high quality a UPNP stream straight to the NDS is going to be better.

This is why the Sonore UPNP bridge or lms-to-upnp solutions are so attractive as it preserves the quality of the NDS as designed. I cannot distinguish a difference between playing through the Naim app or Roon using the plugin method which is as it should be.

I’ve found it completely reliable once I have got it working and would’t wish to run any other way. It’s a super workaround for the older streamers.

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Hi Camphuw, sorry for the delay. Yes if you have an Airplay device then Roon Core can send audio to it. As said above some Airplay devices resample the audio… although that is totally lossless there are as in any upsampling activity arithmetic errors introduced (oversampling with zero value samples is the only way not to produce arithmetic errors, but that has to be an integer multiple of Fs, which 44.1 to 48 clearly isn’t). And because Airplay devices tend to be consumer products designed and manufactured at low cost, their digital transport mechanisms tend to be quite basic and digitally noisy… so you are unlikely to get top performance from Airplay… but it won’t be too shabby.

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Thanks Simon. All in all I think Roon will have to wait as the Core would have to replace my existing NAS.

I don’t see why, the Core would need to make use of your NAS for local media.

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