Roon vs Naim (again)

Roon uses their own protocol, RAAT. (Though it can integrate non-RAAT devices to an extent, such as Squeezebox by emulating LMS)

On the Roon forum there is an older thread titled “Roon / RAAT Architecture and protocol VS DLNA / UPnP AV” that asked about differences, and in the responses you can find many detailed explanations and also links to other threads, such as the “RAAT and clock ownership” thread.

I would link the threads but I think it’s against the rules. The Roon forum is at community dot roonlabs dot com

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Ah, 2016 article I read referred to LMS and development.

Time to get a trial running I think to see how it connects and synchs to my various devices. Next weeks playtime :slight_smile:

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They added Squeezebox support in December 2015 (Roon 1.1, Build 88), so maybe this was the reason for that article.

Note that for multi-room not all zones are created equal, e.g., Squeezebox zones can’t be grouped with RAAT zones:

I have never tried any of the “foreign” integration, and the extent of my multiroom experience is having once put the NDX2 and a bluetooth speaker into one Roon zone (using the Roon app on the phone to bluetooth to the speaker)

That’s interesting and I need to do the trial to see which devices I can synch. The sqbx ‘s aren’t important (bedrooms) but I run Auralic, Bluesound Node and GoldNote Ds-10 which are. In all honesty if it works, a years subscription while I decide on my final streaming solution will be worth it.

“Roon-ready” is the preferable integration with zero headaches, and you are looking good

And the squeezeboxes should work as well in their own zone, just not playing synchronously with other zones

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@bruss, make sure that your Roon Core is wired (in particular if it’s feeding several zones simultaneously), the endpoints can use wifi if it is good. See:

Wanted to add regarding the SQ question, I mentioned my experience the last time here and I have nothing to add :slight_smile:

The thread also has other people’s experiences, such as Thomas hearing no difference, and we can be sure his system is resolving enough :wink:

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I think differences can be heard depending on how a system is capable of showing it.

I hear differences between roon and Naim app and different servers.

If I run roon from my NAS the sound is worse than running roon server from my Mac Pro, the NAS is very practical but a very noisy machine with a less powerful processor that somehow influences the music being played.

The power cable of the roon server affects also the sound.

So different servers can sound different, if not what is the reason of an audiophile server.

I would gladly preferred that this was not the case, but in my case it is what it is.

I think we are assuming sufficiently capable hardware, a potentially underpowered NAS might have an influence.

What is the point of a carbon fibre enclosure on an switch? Making audiophiles pay

Nooooooo…. I was also a victim of being extracted because of trying to get the most of my music.

I had edited my post because it seemed potentially offending, glad that it’s OK :wink:

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No problem, I like all comments good or bad, anyone of us have an opinion about something, in the end we all learn with each other. So I will never be offended.

It’s a forum, we all sometimes agree to disagree and that is positive.

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I had only good intentions :slight_smile:

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OK, tested and not good news. Roon can not give me the hires synchronisation across rooms and devices that I want.
Looking at what is happening I’m not sure where the delay is being introduced, the network or the Roon processing software. Strangely even on 16/44 Roon has greater delays than the LMS sw. LMS runs 0-1% cpu and 4 mb swap memory in the background, Roon runs 2-6%cpu and a surprising 800 mb swap memory in the background. This is without actually connecting or playing anything. I suspect Roon really does need its own pc or core to run efficiently.

I can see the additional music, Band, and recording information being attractive, but it isn’t what I am looking for.

As a side issue I have discovered something useful while playing around. If LMS is enabled with the airplay plugin, Amazon HD (but 16/44) on the iPad can play to all the sqbx kit via LMS, in synch. I can then also use the Duet remote to put a sleep time on. Small things but useful.

It does need quite some memory I think because of all the pictures and metadata. Though it should be fine if it has 8 GB available for normal library sizes, that’s what the Nucleus appliance has.

CPU I don’t know, I run it on a dedicated NUC. But I don’t think that 6% is unexpected when doing something, it is known that it does need some oomph. However, many people on the Room forum run the Core on their laptop, so I would expect it to work. It seems weird to be that high when idling.

However, do you have local files? After initial setup it needs some time to settle down in this case, because it runs an analysis on all local files to extract tags, identify releases, and figure out the volume levels.

Probably the multi room has more demands generally, the hardware recommendations do say that the relevant driving factors for resource requirements are library sizes, number of simultaneous zones, and heavy DSP usage.

As I don’t use multi room, I don’t know what’s going on with delays. Probably best to ask on the Roon forum

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Roon loads a big chunk of the database in to Ram so its not having to access it on disk all the time so its do take up more than lms would. What devices are you syncing all squeezebox. I dont have any issues with all my RAAT zones in perfect sync at any res. You can compensate for delays and set one zone as the master sync that all others sync to. I have found you do have to set some delays for some devices as the processing on them can be more or less dependant on the audio hardware used. I do have a dedicated core its not mean machine, only a lower rated gen 7 i7 processor but it does run RoonOS.

If you think the core machine isnt up to it, check you signal path, by clicking on the coloured dot in the now playing section when playing to the grouped zone. If its struggling it will show processing speed if its below 2 your in trouble. It only shows speeds below 100x of realtime so if nothing shows nothign to worry about so its likely just a mater of adjusting the delay for the devices.

When you say delays… do you mean the delay between when you click play and when you hear the music? If so, that is normal as Roon buffers some of the song before seeing it along. In cases of multi-zone synchronization it might take slightly longer as well. You get used to this quickly.

As for troubleshooting your hi-res playback issues, it might be helpful if you posted an image of your signal path. Here is the path while music is playing in one of my zones as a reference. Notice that there is no volume leveling or any kind of DSP taking place. You would see that listed in the path if it was taking place. Also, the purple dot indicated that there is no additional processing taking place. I would start with this most direct path and see if you are still facing problems.

Also, make sure that the device setup of each of your audio zones shows the correct supported maximum sample rates.

Thanks for the additional information, To clarify. There is not a problem playing hi resolution files. There is not a problem with a delay between pressing the play button and hearing the music. The problem I want to solve is a multi room synchronisation issue. I have three rooms around a central hall. One room has an Auralic, one room has a Gold Note, one room has a Bluesound Node. When I connect them as a group, there is a synchronisation delay as I move from room to room. This occurs with both 16/44 and higher res files. The slowest network speed at the farthest point is 54 mbps, the fastest is 836 mbps. I am running the roon ‘core’ on an Intel processor PC of some vintage though. i5, 8gb, x64 win10.

Then adjust the delays in audio setting per device to get them in sync, that’s the whole point of the sync delay feature. Roon will assign one as the master clock to sync other to, but you can choose this yourself to and then set priorities of the others.

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The only thing I’d say, although the transported data is the same (in most cases) between UPnP and RAAT (Roon) the software ‘driver’ in the streamer is different code so might yield a minor or detectable sonic difference between UPnP HTTP data transfer and RAAT for a given streamer.

@CrystalGipsy is spot on… different devices can take different times to render audio… once they have received the data. In the Naim ecosystem Naim can control this. Roon is open to many different manufacturers/vendors so one needs to adjust depending on which devices you are using.

Also remember around a hall… depending on speakers you will have delays from the time it takes for the sound to carry.