Multi-room solution advice please (Roon? Other?)

[Greg Erskine]

Yeah you are probably right. I was sort of imaging Vortex needed a single screen with all zone(s) controls on it.

[Aldoszx]

You can use Daphile as LMS anf piCorePlayer or Ropieee as Squeezelite endpoints.
Like this, you'll have similar experience as using Roon.
You can choose what zone(s) must play and can group them.

[Vortex]

Gentlemen, lots of great ideas here, this is all gold for me. I appreciate your comments, thank you, I'll have the opportunity to try these options.

Last week a big box arrived from the U.S. and I was more than happy opening it and confirming all goods are in mint condition, no damages. Here they're opened to accomodate room climate.. all were ice cold during transport (obviously).




And a quick test just for fun with a second order Bessel @ 3800K I could combine from the passive XO elements of my old, scrapped 3-way:


The HiVi tweeters are huge, I thought they're smaller, however they still seem to blend very nicely with these midbass drivers after half a meter or so. Btw they have metal front plate, I think aluminum, but they feel like built like tanks. The Aurum Cantus drivers are worth the price I think.. despite trying them in such a very 'suboptimal' way they already showed me such smoothness and detail in the midrange, wow. Can't wait to put them into their final boxes and place.

Next step will be having a prototype box made by the carpenter out of mdf.
Final boxes will be made from oak, most probably - if you think thick birch plywood would be even better, just tell me, we're not there yet so I can change this.

DSP & DAC - need your confirmation
Due to 2-wire existing cabling - which we can't change at all - I need to go passive with the 6 boxes. But then I thought I'm stilly trying to improve sound a bit with a DSP.

Considerations:
- shall I use external DAC with an all-digital miniDSP or will miniDSP's built-in DAC do the trick ? (Quality-wise)
- I have 2 rooms. Living room with 4 speakers and bedroom with 2. One source feeding both rooms is fine, source being either the Philips Android TV (Tidal app installed) via optical TOSLINK, or a RPi via USB. But this wouldn't make a full ecosystem in itself, still.. I think.
- or a different setup, maybe 2 RPi-s ? (One for each room). With aforementioned player software they might just do the magic of controlling the rooms on one interface, but then how about DSP integration ? Can I measure and set up 2 different zones, or better said, 2 different "profiles" for the 2 rooms, within 1 DSP ?
- or maybe I need 2 RPi-s and 2 miniDSP modules, either with or without built-in DAC, depending on if I prefer external DAC or not.
- 1x 6-channel amp or 4ch+2ch amp or 3x2ch amp modules - is there a difference really ? (DIY case and electronics + some kind of TPA3116 Class D amp modules).


How would you solve all this, focusing on ease of use and user experience ? <- This question is regarding remote control via 1 interface and the possibility of DSP-correcting both zones. In both zones, at least 1 smaller sub will be added, nicely hidden behind a sofa. Maybe 2 for the living room.

[daxdg]

Hi.
I've just set up a simple multi-room, multi-zone set-up for myself, which may meet your requirements...

Initially I was looking at Sonos - but the price tag soon put me off, and I wanted to make use of the several existing amps and speakers around the house that I have amassed over the years - and I came across the Arylic line of products ( see arylic.com ). These provide a long list of options to stream from almost any source, and with a very "customer-friendly" pricing!
I'm using a combination of two products : the A50 amplifier (2x25W) for my living room speakers, and Up2Stream Mini boards as inputs for existing amps.
The A50 is small, and quite good-looking - and if you don't like it, then it's also easy to hide:


... and the Up2Stream Mini boards are TINY - half the size of a credit card, so perfect for DIY projects!
For the moment, mine is installed in a box my guitar pick-ups came in - and plugged into my home studio mixer:



Set-up was mostly straight-forward, and I'm very happy with the sound - It may not be suitable for a true audiophile hifi buff, but for most of us mere mortals, the sound is perfectly good enough. I would probably recommend the mini-boards over the A50, as you'll get more audio tuning possiblities with a 'real' amp than the A50 provides.

Everything's controlled by an App (4Stream), which connects to all the devices, and links/unlinks them as you want. Sound sources can be streaming from the phone, or a NAS, or internet streaming service, or ... (long list) - via WiFi or BlueTooth (or wires). The devices connect to the WiFi/Internet themselves, so the phone's battery is saved.

... so overall I'm very happy with my set-up, and it all cost me less in total than a single Sonos device!