Devialet Chat

Maybe I should ask this elsewhere but there seen to be lots of knowledgeable Roon-ists on here. Is Roon any good with classical music yet?

How do you define 'good with classical music'?

P.S. I'm still a newbie and learning.

(26-May-2016, 16:15)Antoine Wrote: [ -> ]Using Roon Server you don't need a Core installation on a seperate machine. All you need with it is a control point e.g. a nice Apple iPad AIR or Pro. You'll install AIR on the Roon Server machine, it'll present itself as a soundcard/output speakers.

Unfortunately AIR isn't very stable for all users. WiFi worsens the issues. Plenty of topics on the forum discussing that and Devialet's lack of fitting action.

Thank you for the reply. Still not sure I'm getting this. Are you saying I run server and air both on the ipad and that's all I need to stream Tidal to the Devialet? My desktop is not needed? And if it's not needed, how would I access the flacs that are on its hard drive?

I saw that Air3 is available for mac and not Android or Win. Does mac = ipad too? If so, seems a good reason to pick up an ipad over other tablets?

(27-May-2016, 02:28)pdg540 Wrote: [ -> ]

(26-May-2016, 16:15)Antoine Wrote: [ -> ]Using Roon Server you don't need a Core installation on a seperate machine. All you need with it is a control point e.g. a nice Apple iPad AIR or Pro. You'll install AIR on the Roon Server machine, it'll present itself as a soundcard/output speakers.

Unfortunately AIR isn't very stable for all users. WiFi worsens the issues. Plenty of topics on the forum discussing that and Devialet's lack of fitting action.

Thank you for the reply. Still not sure I'm getting this. Are you saying I run server and air both on the ipad and that's all I need to stream Tidal to the Devialet? My desktop is not needed? And if it's not needed, how would I access the flacs that are on its hard drive?

I saw that Air3 is available for mac and not Android or Win. Does mac = ipad too? If so, seems a good reason to pick up an ipad over other tablets?

No, that's not correct. AIR3.0b is only available for Mac. You can install Roon or RoonServer on your Mac and use Roon Remote on Android/iPad/iPhone to control Roon and make music selection including local music, Tidal and Internet Radio. Your music can be stored in your Mac or a networked drive such as NAS. Drive location has to be set in Roon.

Option #1 - Try the 2.X Windows version of AIR on your Windows Laptop. You would install RoonServer on the laptop as well. What version of Windows are you running? Ideally would connect the Windows Laptop via ethernet to your router or switch. You would connect the Devialet via ethernet to your router or switch as well. You would then use an appropriate Android device or IOS device supported by Roon to control playback. This would allow playback of the files on your Windows laptop plus Tidal.

If you don't have the capability to wire the Laptop and Devialet to ethernet via a router or switch, you can do a direct ethernet connection between the Windows Laptop and Devialet. You will need to enable WIFI on the laptop as well for Tidal playback.

Option #2 - If option #1 is not feasible or if you find you have issues with playback of the 2.x version of AIR for Windows, and assuming no v3 AIR is available for Windows then in the interim you would connect the Windows Laptop to the Devialet via USB, until v3 AIR is available.

You can still control playback for appropriate, supported Android or IOS device.

Sounds very much like the Logitech Media Server system then. I know almost nothing of mac and ipad as I've always used Windows and android. Things will probably fall in place once all the hardware and software is in front of me.

Yes things will fall into place and you will end up happy. Welcome aboard BTW!

Stick with what you know, Windows and Android, no wrong path to follow.

(27-May-2016, 04:22)baddog Wrote: [ -> ]Option #1 - Try the 2.X Windows version of AIR on your Windows Laptop. You would install RoonServer on the laptop as well. What version of Windows are you running? Ideally would connect the Windows Laptop via ethernet to your router or switch. You would connect the Devialet via ethernet to your router or switch as well. You would then use an appropriate Android device or IOS device supported by Roon to control playback. This would allow playback of the files on your Windows laptop plus Tidal.

If you don't have the capability to wire the Laptop and Devialet to ethernet via a router or switch, you can do a direct ethernet connection between the Windows Laptop and Devialet. You will need to enable WIFI on the laptop as well for Tidal playback.

Option #2 - If option #1 is not feasible or if you find you have issues with playback of the 2.x version of AIR for Windows, and assuming no v3 AIR is available for Windows then in the interim you would connect the Windows Laptop to the Devialet via USB, until v3 AIR is available.

You can still control playback for appropriate, supported Android or IOS device.

Hey Baddog. The laptop is actually a Win 10 desktop (touchscreen all in one) and the router, devialet and the desktop are quite literally geographically located in 3 different corners of the place. lol. I guess I'm gonna find out if AIR and wifi works for me!

Also agree it makes sense to stick to familiar platforms if the difference is marginal....... Just thought since I will be buying a new tablet, I'd pick up the one that works best for this application.

(26-May-2016, 17:28)f1eng Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe I should ask this elsewhere but there seen to be lots of knowledgeable Roon-ists on here. Is Roon any good with classical music yet?

f1 I don't do much classical as you know, but I believe opinion is still mixed among the classical users - some say its the best out there, others say it needs improvement. The current Roon version in development is allegedly focussing on all things meta-data, so maybe the next release will be a different beast. I'd really encourage you to drop a line over at the Roon forums if you haven't already - there are a lot of users with a big cross section of music tastes and some of them with absolutely eye waveringly huge libraries - so I'm sure you'll get some good honest feedback on where it is at the moment. What I have come across is that the sentiment seems to be metadata is bad for classical and its an industry-wide problem, but this is just me regurgitating things I don't know about personally..

One thing I would ask though, in your current CD setup - how do you organise/find things? Do you mainly go by album title? Position on shelves? I guess what I'm thinking is if you want a pretty way to have all your CDs available in Roon - you could just mimic your current setup and work with it in album mode and find things the same way as you would with CDs, except they can be queued and saved as favourites etc etc. The 'classical specific' features like movements etc, would then be at your fingertips as things improved/evolved. In any case I can't see how it could be 'worse' than finding CDs on shelves.

I only had 800 or so CDs to digitise, but getting through them was the most challenging part of moving to computer playback, so its never too early to start! If I had to do it again or I suddenly acquired a mass of new CDs, I'd probably invest in a more specific ripping station or get someone to do it for me. On a Mac mini and external USB CD drive using iTunes it was relatively painful - mainly just the speed and sorting out artwork/missing metadata etc - which I now know there are better tools for....