In addition to playing hi-rez multichannel, Roon has implemented advanced DSP capabilities.
(Both companies acknowledge that Playback's ASIO driver is not yet compatible with Roon.) But Roon also recognized the Playback Designs Sonoma Syrah music server on my LAN, and I was able to play multichannel files up to DSD256 via Ethernet. On the other hand, while Roon recognized the Playback Designs USB-XIII Digital Interface after I'd installed the latter's ASIO driversee this issue's " Music in the Round"it restricted me to stereo. Playing through the Roon Ready exaSound PlayPoint audio player via Ethernet was a piece of cake, and a vision of the future of networked audio. Roon is installed on my Baetis Prodigy X i7-based server, which I used with Roon Ready exaSound DACs and the miniDSP U-DAC8 via USB, at all of the resolutions and formats those devices can handle. You also need to define the number of output channels, and whether downmixing or remapping is necessary. You still need to recognize and choose an output device (DAC, computer, AVR, processor, network device, etc.) and choose which file formats and resolutions that device can handle. Setup for Roon playback of multichannel files is the same as for stereothe new setup menu serves both. Albums are ready to play as soon as you can see them on screen. Roon's analysis of the files to enhance metadata and playback continues in the background and can take days, depending on the number of files and their sizes. This doesn't entail moving or changing the original files, as links to the files and to Roon's rich stores of metadata are incorporated into the active library, and it's done very rapidly. You just tell Roon to add the location of the files to the Music Folder, and it adds the files to its library. Using Roon to play multichannel files is as easy as with mono and two-channel files. Here I discuss Roon's handling of multichannel, high-resolution files, and DSP. To merely list the accumulated enhancements would take pages, and many of them work in the background, unnoticeable by users except in making Roon's operation smoother and faster. With the announcement of Roon v.1.3 early this year, the multichannel barrier was breached, and the updates since then (currently, build 234) have transformed it from just another pretty face to a formidable application (footnote 2). Turns out I wasn't the only one asking for multichannel. But in the last two years Roon has been improved and extended, driven in part by a lively user website that's supported by the active participation of company personnel. At the time, I found Roon intriguing but frustrating, primarily because it lacked support for multichannel audio. Its history, from its roots in Sooloos and Meridian, is outlined in Jon Iverson's review of Roon v.1.0 in the October 2015 issue. The Roon music-management and -playback system is no longer new (footnote 1).
Kalman Rubinson returned to Roon v.1.3 in September 2017 (Vol.40 No.9):