Innuos MKII - USB Skipping with Roon

[asdf1000]

4 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

Where in any of those links does it say that the Zenith is using RAAT or is a Roon Endpoint?

 

Notice the use of "Roon bridge".

 

Yes I do notice.... See highlighted below....

 

https://kb.roonlabs.com/RAAT

 

 

 

[Cebolla]

Yeah, subtle use of Roon bridge, instead of Roon Bridge!

[asdf1000]

Just now, Cebolla said:

Yeah, subtle use of Roon bridge, instead of Roon Bridge!

 

Hehe. Do you own a Zennith and know for sure it can't work as a RAAT endpoint (when Roon Core mode is disabled, per danny the COO...) ?

 

 

[asdf1000]

From Nuno Vitorino, R&D Director at Innuos:

 

"I'd suggest customers having a Zenith to try the two scenarios and check which one they prefer: 

1. Zenith working as Roon Core playing back at CD Quality or upsampled to 384KHz.
2. Zenith working as a Roon Bridge playing back upsampled DSD256 from a Roon server running on a PC somewhere on the network"

 

https://devialetchat.com/thread-3853-page-2.html

[Cebolla]

Unfortunately not, but I'd certainly be more inclined to believe the posts from the reliable members of these forums, such as

@austinpop:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38110-innuos-zenith-se-mkii/?do=findComment&comment=836489

On 6/21/2018 at 4:14 AM, austinpop said:

Just a quick heads up to fellow Zenith SE owners. If you're like me, where you're committed to Roon, but have noticed that the internal squeezelite player sounds better, Innuos may have found a solution, where we can have our cake and eat it too.

 

Nuno had me test an experimental build on my system, where the squeezelite (internal player) daemon has been modified to work as a Roon endpoint. So basically, in Roon, you select the Squeezelite (internal) player as the target endpoint!

 

Here is what I learned from my listening experience:

1. The SQ of the squeezelite player from Roon was identical, or as good as, the normal mode of LMS/iPeng. So that is good.
2. Since Squeezelite is supposed to be able to handle up to 24/384 (as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezelite), there is a puzzling 192 limit in the Roon device setup. This still needs to be investigated. For me - I do have some DXD, and DSD128 content that I do not want to play downsampled. But it's not a showstopper. I can always switch back for these albums.
3. Playback is not totally glitch free. Occasionally - it happened to me every few minutes - the stream will abruptly stop. If I hit play again, it will resume fine. I am guessing it is some fragility in the LMS emulation in Roon, but who knows. Again, not a show stopper.
4. One clear advantage this mode (Roon->squeezelite) has over the iPeng/LMS approach is that you can stream MQA from Tidal no problem. I was able to set the Squeezebox device properties in Roon for MQA to "Decoder and Renderer," and the MQA stream passed through perfectly to the Mytek DAC. The outdated Tidal plugin in LMS only allows 16/44.1, so it messes up MQA.

Innuos still have to come up with user controls (toggles in the Server Integration UI) to enable this, but I've enthusiastically recommended to Nuno that they deliver this as soon as feasible. 

 

[rickca]

34 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

So for the Zenith to play audio properly from the Roon core server, you are relying on Roon emulating LMS without any problems.

I sent your post to Nuno at Innuos for his input and I'll post his response.

[austinpop]

5 hours ago, Cebolla said:

Unfortunately not, but I'd certainly be more inclined to believe the posts from the reliable members of these forums, such as

@austinpop:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38110-innuos-zenith-se-mkii/?do=findComment&comment=836489

 

 

I'm not sure what you're attributing to me?

 

I'm also not sure what you're claiming vis-a-vis Roon support on the Zenith? I have no reason to believe that Innuos are not using the Roon-supplied implementations of Core and Bridge on their OS. What makes you think otherwise?

[Cebolla]

Hi austinpop,

 

Thanks for responding to this.

 

Ok, looks like I've put my foot in it, big time!

 

Your post that I had linked to you mentioned Innuous' plans for providing Roon core server -> Zenith's Squeezelite streamer. As that post was in June I'd assumed that it would by now have been implemented. Looks like I mistook the post to also mean that it was going to be the only mechanism by which the Zenith would be playing audio from Roon core server, given the improvement in sound quality.

 

My apologies to @FrankMA, @Em2016, @rickca & anyone who may have been mislead by my posts.

[austinpop]

5 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

Hi austinpop,

 

Thanks for responding to this.

 

Ok, looks like I've put my foot in it, big time!

 

Your post that I had linked to you mentioned Innuous' plans for providing Roon core server -> Zenith's Squeezelite streamer. As that post was in June I'd assumed that it would by now have been implemented. Looks like I mistook the post to also mean that it was going to be the only mechanism by which the Zenith would be playing audio from Roon core server, given the improvement in sound quality.

 

My apologies to @FrankMA, @Em2016, @rickca & anyone who may have been mislead by my posts.

 

No worries at all. This sh..., I mean, stuff is complex!

 

The feature you're referring to is a different thing. So to back up, here are the standard Roon use cases:

• local (i.e. running on the Zenith) Roon Core: music is read from the designated storage, either local or remote, rendered, and then handed off to audio devices - also either local, i.e. via ALSA, or remote on another Roon Bridge.
• local Roon Bridge, remote Roon Core, communication via RAAT.

The above is just standard Roon implementation.

 

What Innuos have claimed, and we owners have found to be correct, is that SQ is better than Roon, when using their tuned implementations of LMS as the music server, and squeezelite as the player, both running locally on the Zenith. The assertion is that the SQ benefits accrue from their ability to tune the code of these open-source projects, something they cannot do with Roon. One of the features they attribute the SQ gain to is the use of a big memory buffer in squeezelite, so playback is essentially in-memory.

 

What Innuos is working on - initially promised in August, now expected in September - is a way to leverage the LMS emulation in Roon Core, and to expose the squeezelite player as a target "device" in Roon. I heard this prototype in my June report. And yes, we want it - because it gives us the SQ advantage of  the tuned squeezelite, without losing the user experience of Roon.

 

Hope that clarifies matters!

 

 

[FrankMA]

On 9/10/2018 at 2:19 PM, austinpop said:

Hope that clarifies matters!

 

Thank you @austinpop  No worries @Cebolla

 

I have ordered the tX-USBultra, Uptone LPS-1.2 and a Lush II. Very curious to see if it solves the Roon skipping and how much farther this will take the MKII. Will report

[soares]

4 hours ago, FrankMA said:

 

Thank you @austinpop  No worries @Cebolla

 

I have ordered the tX-USBultra, Uptone LPS-1.2 and a Lush II. Very curious to see if it solves the Roon skipping and how much farther this will take the MKII. Will report

Please do. Tks.

[FrankMA]

I have had the tX in since last Wed and the LPS-1.2 since last Thurs.  MKII>SOtM USB>tX>Lush>PS Audio. Still waiting on the Lush II to arrive. Using Por 2 and have 5v turned on going to the PS

 

Ran about 24 hours ok but I since than have had instances of stopping & skipping (Radio & Shuffle) with Roon. Back to the LMS player.......

 

On a positive note with about 50 hrs of burnin in I was very impressed with the sound I was getting. Huge soundstage. Tight, powerful bass. A layer of digital glare gone. Nice improvement

 

[FrankMA]

Been running the LMS player for quite a while. Rock solid/sounds better but no Roon from a usability standpoint. Ocassionally I'll go back to Roon to see if it skips and it invariably does.

 

However about 36 hours ago I kicked it off via Radio and it has been going since. Roon/Innuos software updates have happened recently but other than that no changes in my system.

 

Let's hope it continues to work because when Innuos does launch the LMS output option for Roon I really want to go back.....