Roon endpoint for Roon trial?

[raym55]

@JimDog

Are you saying I should try Roon anyway using my wired laptop as both Roon Core and Roon output/endpoint?

I’m certainly not going to make decisions for you but why not? It won’t cost you anything and it may scratch the itch one way or another.
Unless you try it you’ll never know.

[JimDog]

Ok, I just downloaded Roon Core onto my laptop.
And Roon Remote onto my iPad.
And linked to Qobuz and Tidal.
But when I play tracks they play to the laptop speakers.
I can’t open the Roon Core program on the laptop.
It runs in the background but will not open so I’m not sure how t direct the Core to send the files to the 272?

The Roon remote app on the iPad will not apparently choose the 272.
The laptop is plugged into one of my 3 Cisco switches via an ethernet cable, so the Roon Core is on the same immediate network as the 272 - so I would imagine it should find it easily?

[raym55]

Is the 272 Roon ready? I have no idea, if it is you should see it after enabling it in roon settings/audio.
You don’t do anything to the core, it looks after itself. Any setting are via the control app.

[JimDog]

Nope - the 272 isn’t Roon Ready.
only the current range of Naim streamers are Roon Ready.

(the amount of time you spend handing around on here, Ray, I’d have expected you to know that…)

I’ve looked at all the settings in the Roon Remote app and can’t see one that will find the 272…

[JimDog]

Doh - why am I wasting my time on this?
I forgot that Roon can’t even see upnp devices.
So without an endpoint it cannot be done.

[JimDog]

@trickydickie

I would do as @raym55 suggests first and gt it going and then see if you can get lms-to-upnp to run to allow you to send the music to your 272 via UPNP.

This will then be a valid test for you and you can then look at creating a ‘production’ version if you decide this is the way forward.

@trickydickie
How would I get lms-to-upnp to run on my laptop to send files to my 272?
thanks
Jim

At the moment, Roon Server seems happy running in the background on my laptop - and Roon Remote is installed fine on my iPad and has found and processed my favorites from Tidal and Qobuz as far as I can see.

So would I just follow instructions in this thread?

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

There are a lot of posts on how to get this up and running so rather than traipse through 100s of posts to piece it all together I’ll pull together here. It took a while to nut out some of the finer points so I hope this helps. There are appear to be two differing methods of using Roon with older streamers. Get a Rpi and Allo DAC or some derivation and use that as the end point. Use a method that creates an endpoint the bridges the Roon Raat protocol to something that the older streamers unde…

[raym55]

@JimDog

(the amount of time you spend handing around on here, Ray, I’d have expected you to know that…)

I tend to look at things of interest, ask questions relative to me or help when I think I can. I have little knowledge of the whole Naim range of products.
Oh … and the Joke thread.

[trickydickie]

Jim

Basically yes, follow the instructions in the first post of the thread.

Some points of note. Apologies if you know some of this stuff already.

Download from https://sourceforge.net/projects/lms-plugins-philippe44/files/UPnPBridge-1.27.0.zip/download

When you download and unzip lms-to-upnp (from now on called ‘the app’) you will get all the different versions for Mac, Windows etc. The files that get run are in the bin directory.

If using Windows you need squeeze2upnp-win.exe

You will need to launch it from a command line, presumably you know how to do this.

The first time you launch you need to use a command switch, i.e. type

squeeze2upnp-win.exe -i config.xml

When you do this the app will scan you network for UPNP devices and create a new configuration file. This takes approx 30 seconds. The configuration file is called config.xml.

Once the config.xml file has been created you need to amend it.

Open the file in Notepad and change the line

<roon_mode>0</roon_mode>

to

<roon_mode>1</roon_mode>

This turns on Roon support.

Next locate your 272 in the area of the config file.

You will need to either amend or add the following line

<sample_rate>192000</sample_rate>

This will ensure that your 272 will play 24/192 files.

Then start the app from a command prompt. Ensure that you use the -Z switch as suggested in the original post as this will save memory.

i.e.

squeeze2upnp-win.exe -Z

Hopefully it will run and your 272 will show up in Roon.

I don’t actually run this way, I use a NAS with Logitech Media Server running in a container with the plugin enabled. It saves having a computer running.

If you have trouble it could be your Antivirus/Firewall blocking something so temporarily disable to see if this resolved your issue.

[JimDog]

Thanks Dickie
Command lines - I mainly used them back in 1980 when aged 16 I left school, but somehow ended up studying Fortran and Basic at a university in New York.

I might give this a crack if I get a couple of hours free…?

[charlesphoto]

No, with the microRendu. The V1 is just a DAC/preamp, it doesn’t stream.

IMO you’re too hung up on sound quality - that’s not what Roon or the difference between Tidal and Qobuz is about. Purely music discovery and library curation. So either those things are meaningful to you or not. Of course there’s DSP in Roon, but I don’t mess with that. If I were you, I would just play with Roon on your laptop if you can’t get it to the 272 just to see how it works from a discovery/curation aspect and forget the sound quality one. It’s bit perfect so in reality shouldn’t be any/much different from an UPNP server (ime).

I’m pretty sure Sonore has a UK distributor so you might want to check on that if interested in a bridge device. Or a Small Green Computer server which will host Roon and run the SonicOrbiter OS which has the bridge. Considerably more money, but good all in one. There is a UK version as well. Check out vortexbox.co.uk

[JimDog]

Ahh!

Well, I reverted to Plan B - upnp via Kazoo or MConnectHD.

I finally got the Bubble upnp server software to do a clear and positive internet connectivity test.

I finally also figured out how to clear the playlist queue in the Kazoo app, which had somehow filled up with dozens of copies of Tony Williams and Deep Purple tracks.

Then I played 3 versions of the well recorded and excellent track ‘Crossroads’ from the Paul Bley LP ‘Notes on Ornette’ :

1. from Tidal via MConnectHD
2. from Tidal via the Naim app
3. from Qobuz via MConnectHD

Result - 1. and 3. were clearly superior - a fuller, chunkier sound.

There was no noticeable difference between Qobuz vs Tidal in that test - although that was not what I was really looking for in that test anyway.

And for once the app worked fine.

Interestingly, I then tried comparing Brad Mehldau ‘The Garden’ from Tidal 16/44 via MConnectHD vs Qobuz hi res. I can’t comment on the SQ quality difference because at that point I got the 20 secs on/ 10 secs off fault - so I’m now pretty sure that playing hires into the 272 is not worth trying.

I will test this latter issue further. It may only apply to files with sampling rates higher than 96kHz.

But basically this whole issue is now solved.

I will use MConnect app.

Roon is out.

Thanks to @Nestor_Burma and @frenchrooster for pushing me to try MConnectHD.

[james_n]

So what’s the Mconnect app doing here - acting as a Proxy server for Tidal / Qobuz ?

[JimDog]

No - as far as I know, the proxy server is Bubble UPNP Server software that I have running on the Windows 10 ASUS laptop that is connected to the first of my 3 Cisco 2960s via an ethernet cable.

MConnectHD is just the control app.

It seems to do most of the same things as the Naim app and other apps.

I’d much prefer to use the Naim app, which has great mini reviews by Thom Jurek of some LPs, and makes some good suggestions.

But using the proxy server does make a nice difference to SQ.

This is something many users on here do on their NASs.

In the longer run, I may find a quieter, less power intensive way to run Bubble - or to do what Bubble is doing i.e. to send a wav stream to the 272.

But at the moment I’m very happy to have finally got this system working, (with almost zero spend) and found that it really is as good as others have said.

I don’t know how close this gets the 272/555DR to the new gen streamers, but it sounds very good to me.

[james_n]

Ah i see - so the app is of no consequence, you’re just comparing running Tidal / Qobuz through a proxy compared to Tidal / Qobuz directly on the 272. Understood.

[frenchrooster]

I tried Mconnect and found Qobuz was better sounding than Tidal native on my Nds.
Some were also satisfied by Mconnect on the French forum.
However my WiFi is not very stable and strong, and I had too many drop outs with Qobuz on Mconnect.
Glad it works for you.

[JimDog]

Yes, that’s correct.
The Naim app is in my view functionally and informationally much better than MConnect.

And as far as I know the app itself doesn’t have a direct influence on SQ - it’s the processing in the PC that makes the difference, feeding the 272 the WAV stream that it prefers.

[james_n]

Makes sense Jim. Looks like this is a good solution until a 272 replacement with the latest streaming platform arrives (is there a tumbleweed Emoji…)

[JimDog]

yes, the dream machine

I have long since resigned myself to never seeing that killer streamer/dac/preamp 372 with no internal psu, twin Burndies, no screen and no volume knob…

[JimDog]

to be honest, I’m getting close now to something I can just sit back and enjoy - a plateau

my HiFi To Do List for this mamoth upgrade cycle is almost done

[frenchrooster]

And how about something under your speakers ? Still wondering ? Or some ideas to test ?