What audio would you have that is not in roon?
(Possibly yes)
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Hi @PaisleyUnderground please forgive me for not painting the full picture, you would install to the sd card on the Raspberry Pi RoPiee XL, this will allow you to send audio via Airplay or directly from Spotify if you are running it off your computer.
Alternatively you could install DietPi, although that requires a bit more tinkering on at the command level:
On the SGC and Innous, yes they are similar and I was using it as an alternative and in case you had CDs you wanted to convert for Roon.
I honestly feel the building a ROCK using the intel NUC is the best bang for the buck and does not need to be connected anywhere near your music station to boot. Also you could buy the Roon Nucleus which is a bit pricey but is a simple plug in play.
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Can Roon play anything? I thought it was limited to music files and Qobuz or Tidal. Will it support Youtube or Netflix (or equivalent streaming)? I don’t think it will support Amazon HD.
I was also thinking I might leave my iTunes AAC files on my PC because what’s the point in using up Roon disk space for something I don’t want to stream? And I also have 1+ TB of flacs for which I’m still updating metadata, so I haven’t added those files to my “official” music folder yet. I was thinking they would stay on my PC and then I’d move them across as I update them.
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Ohh, I didn’t get that the first time I read your post, but now you’ve put it that way, I’ll look into the NUC. Thanks!
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Please post here on what you do. If my eyes are watching, I’m certain others will be also. Although I have been using my Mac Mini pretty much for ROON, it does get other use too. That NUC looks like a nice form factor for a dedicated ROON core.
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Ah, no, for that stuff you wold still want the usb out from your computer.
As much as it pains me to agree with @Roark A nuc would be a great way forward. The tricky part about roon is that it is theoretically best to not play off your roon database computer. So if you set up a roon nuc rock, you could use the roon client on you computer, usb to dac, and everything should work fine.
The great thing about a pi streamer is that it isn’t attached to my computer. So when I reboot into a different OS, am running a pile o poorly coded professional software, or don’t want to look at my looming stack of work, I can play through the pi, without having to worry about what my computer is doing.
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Thanks everyone for your advice and support.
I just ordered a PI2AES. There’s a 4-6 week delivery time, so that gives me time to order other parts for the PI2AES and also the NUC. I believe it’s well within my capabilities to build both (i.e. no soldering).
My local Microcenter has the model 10 NUCs in stock, so I think I’ll get the i5 version. The NUC 10 has gotten some bad reviews but those seem centered around the internal graphics card, which I don’t need for Roon, so I don’t see any reason to wait for the NUC 11 (not out yet in the US due to supply shortages, and also not compatible with Roon yet).
I’ll post more as I build stuff.
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Good to hear Paisley, love having a Microcenter nearby as their prices are often the same or better than Amazon.
Looking forward to hearing how you progress!
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Apparently if you are looking to do a lot of eq an i7 might be worth it.
(I run mine on a virtual machine hosted on an underpowered nas box. It’s fine)
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Does anyone have any factual evidence (or even opinions) on USB cable length?
USB 2.0 cables should work fine for data transfer up to 5m (16.4 feet) but I’ve seen a lot of recommendations to keep the USB cable as short as possible for audio, with a max length of 1.5-2m.
I haven’t seen many facts backing that up, although someone on the audiophilestyle.com forum did a test on USB cable lengths (scroll down to the post by John Swenson). He found that all USB cables above 6 feet had errors other than Supra.
I only have 1m USB cables, but I’m curious if other have had success with long cables.
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My facts are based on personal experience.
I’ve purchased and returned or dumped several longer USB cables (2 to 3 meters; brands not recalled). None of them worked reliably for video, hard drives, or CD/DVD data transfers. They’d likely be fine for keyboards or mice. I stick with factory cables, and as short as possible.
I’d like to try Supra.
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In the manual for the Bifrost 2, Schiit recommended no longer than 2m. I went off that.
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I couldn’t remember why I limited the length of my USB cable, but now you mention that, it was the Bifrost 2 manual for me too.
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Is it something to do with needing power to keep the signal going; although I thought that was more for longer lengths.
Maybe 6ft is the optimal length for signal transfer before losses become detrimental (doubt it) or it may be something as simple as even garbage usb cables should be able go 6ft, before the garbageness intervenes. Schiit probably doesnt want a bunch of calls about their DAC not working well because someone is running a poorly insulated 12 foot cable.
Just guessing.
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I wonder if one of the factors is that some audiophile USB cables are not built to USB spec, and can only work up to a certain length.
(Disclaimer: I use an audiophile USB cable, so I’m not attacking those of you who own one)
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I found this from a PS audio thread. I’m quoting Ted Smith (PS audio engineer) here, and whether he is a reliable source I don’t know but it’s food for thought…
“The limit on a simple USB cable’s length is set by the speed of light and the time to get a signal to the end and back of a cable and is approx. 15’. Going just a little over that and things will start to get flaky. If it’s not a certified USB cable the limit may be smaller depending on what changes have been made.”
Update: As I was transferring some files on my computer via usb-c, a thought struck me and I immediately thought of this thread. The same thing happens when trying to find the right usb-c cable. With usb-c cables, it matters if its active or passive. Passive cables can reach up to 40 Gb/s data transfer as long as the length is 0.5m or less…further than that you would need to use an active cable otherwise your data transfer speeds dip down to 20 Gb/s. I think the same thing applies here…I’ll embed my source here! So basically the longer it is the more susceptible to signal degradation. I’m guessing that shorter is better because it would avoid having to add any circuits inside the cable which could add unwanted elements such as noice, etc…
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Well he did design PS Audio’s DAC’s. So yes he does have the knowledge.
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I think it really depends on the cable, I’ve heard from people trying cheap (I’m talking like $2) 3m cable and it didn’t work for audio at all.
But Supra sells cables all the way up to 15m, I haven’t tried them but if I needed a 3-5m cable that gives me some confidence.
Now USB at least in audio while has error checking has no way to ask for retransmission, so I do think the advice as “short as possible” or “only get what you need” is sound.
I use Raspberry Pi’s as steamers and I personally would much rather use a longer network cable than a longer USB cable, knowing network has more robust error correction in place.
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I found that running S/PDIF from a PI2AES to the BF2 provided a substantial improvement compared to USB. I had been using a cheap UPBOARD for USB and never found it that pleasing. I put my old ALLO DIGIONE on and heard an improvement so I lived with this for a while, but still had some issues.
When I received my PI2AES I feel like I finally heard the BF2 everyone had been talking about. It became more pleasing, more quiet, provided more resolution.
I found the ROPIEE XL OS to be the simplest and most robust OS. It allows you to use the PI2AES for ROON, HQPlayer, SqueezeBox, Spotify and others. It’s a great bit of kit - I think you’ll enjoy it. Get a decent S/PDIF cable - BJC makes a good one for a few bucks with very solid connectors.
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One of the most underrated positive attributes of the pi2aes is it’s Swiss Army knife nature, no matter what dac I have right now, the pi2aes hooks right up with whatever format that dac prefers.
Great little piece of kit.
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