been looking at ROON for some time with interest now that my Melco N1A/2 will become a ROON Endpoint
curious on people’s experience on what they have found to sound better vs extra experience that say ROON brings
for example units am interested in
1/ Stick with my Melco N1A/2 drive - buy hardware to run roon core with DSP options to my NDS (suggestions welcome on what hardware, as reading how to do it with software alone made my head explode - special mention to trickydicky for that )
2/ Roon nucleus+ with LPS
3/ Innuous zenith
curious if people have had any experience in sound quality of 1-3 above
You can’t send Roon to the NDS from the Melco even if it gets the Roon endpoint updates, I don’t believe there is spdif output only USB. You would need a USB to spdif converter to get it into NDS. Same for all the other options as well or use an additional Roon/UPnP bridge that makes the Melco redundant as a Roon endpoint.
But you still need a USB to spdif converter for Innuos, unless you have the Mini which bundles it in, the others are all USB only output. Running the Roon core alone won’t get it into the NDS. Only the latest streamed accept Roon as a source without an additional input device.
From what I hear Roon for some reason does not sound as good playing on the Innuos using the inbuilt Roon Bridge as using the Squeezelite experimental Ram player over USB. But this has given a less than stable output for Roon as it’s not designed for Ram playback at all. Apparently latest update has improved the stability though, but it’s not a supported method for Roon so you won’t get Roon support for it as a player, only as a Roon server unless you use Roon Bridge.
Only way for you to know is to really test it in your system. I know some had Melco and swapped to a Nucleus and very happy with the sq, others feel different and prefer sq of a Melco and just UPnP. Some prefer Innuos over Melco.
With you having an older streamer your not going to get Roon anyway without adding a UPnP bridge device or software bridge or a USB to Spdif converter.
thanks for that i clearly did not understand how roon endpoint works
either a) get a USB to spdif convertor and wait for melco roon endpoint upgrade so can try it out
or
b) get a upnp bridge device (does this connect inline to the NDS via ethernet i take it i.e. would wire it Switch > Melco > upnp bridge > NDS)
any suggestions on good sound quality hardware for a (sonore ultra digital???) & b (sonore upnp bridge??)
thanks again appreciate the clarification and advice
Hi @mbj666, its simpler than wiring it inline.
You just wire it into your switch with ethernet cable (see picture), which is on the same network as your NDS.
In my case I have an Innuos Zen Mk3 hardwired to the network which then feeds my NDS by ethernet cable.
The question is, if I understood well: If Melco or Innuos, with Nds, can have Roon without any additional software as Nas, Pc, … @simon.pepper should respond.
But I think you have to run Roon on something, like a pc or Nas.
Yes you do FR, Roon Core needs to run on something.
In my case it’s preloaded on the Innuos.
Others use NAS, laptop, Roon Nucleus, but there are lots of options.
Not sure about the MeIco though.
Maybe Ive confused things by throwing Innuos in to the conversation when the interest was about Melco
Melco are looking at adding Roon Ready status to their hardware. This will.mean it can act as a Roon endpoint but only via USB out. It can’t reroute it via ethernet to a legacy streamer or infact a new streamer. Innuos can act as Roon core server and a Roon endpoint , same applies if using it as an Endpoint it’s usb only apart from the cheap one which has spdif output. So none of them are of use as Roon endpoint to old Naim streaming kit with out a USB to Spdif converter unless you get the cheap one.
I can tell from my experience that roon sounds better if you run it seperatley f.ex. on Nucleus or Sonic and not on Innous…I have an i5 Sonic, works perfectly.
As @CrystalGipsy says re SPDIF converters, although they are not that expensive if you need one. The cheaper Innuos servers are hard disc (Roon say Roon Core should be on SSD) and probably a little under powered to do any significant DSP, so that is something to be aware of.
To run over Ethernet you would need a UPnP bridge; there are plenty of threads on here that describe how you can do it yourself, but you can buy a Sonore UPnP Bridge like that @ChrisH uses.
Another option is one of the Audiostore servers. They have the Sonore UPnP Bridge already built in, run Roon Core and are also Roon Ready. That would enable you to run Roon over Ethernet directly, and give you all the other options that other servers provide. Again there are plenty of threads on here that describe these. When I wanted to Roonify my NAC 272 that is the option I went for, and it works very well.
Curious to understand the value proposition of a Melco in a Roon system. The Core would be on another device? So allowing for the traffic, where does the value of the Melco’s expensive storage come in? Is it just a very expensive Roon USB bridge?
)
