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Can my Roon Nucleus be used with a non-Roon-ready DAC?

I have questions that are due to my limited knowledge, so I am turning to this wise crowd for the answers.

I own a Roon Nucleus that lives in a closet with my cable/modem and is attached directly to the Nucleus via an ethernet cable.

My audio system is about 35 feet away. It consists of an integrated tube amp, DAC/Streamer and a power conditioner (and speakers, of course). The DAC/Streamer is connected via an ethernet cable to a wi-fi extender (so that I don’t have to run 35 feet of cable from the modem to the DAC; not to mention, the WAF would be zero for that solution).

A friend recently brought over his DAC with an Innuous server. I LOVED his DAC!! It brought just the qualities to my system that I was looking for. But, his DAC is not Roon ready. This led me to several questions which I’m hoping you can answer:

1)    Is it possible to make a non-Roon-ready DAC work with Roon?
2)    If I were to get an ethernet switch, could I connect the switch to the wi-fi extender, and then to my Roon Nucleus? If so, would the Nucleus be able to act as a server for the DAC? 
3)    Assuming that the (nameless) DAC is at or above the quality level of the Innuous server, to what degree might the Innuous be contributing to the quality sound I was hearing?

I am purposely being vague about both my specific equipment and my friend’s DAC as I am asking these questions for general purposes, not to get feedback on my equipment vs my friend’s.

Any help you can offer will be appreciated.
 

mwsl

Showing 2 responses by carlsbad

carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

Here is what a DAC has to be in order to use with Roon. It needs to be driverless plug and play such that the Roon Core recognizes it. You can’t go into the core and tell it to just look for a signal in the USB port. It has to recognize the DAC and invite it to send a signal. When I first went Roon I was using a very old loaner W4S DAC that sounded, and still sounds pretty good, but requires a driver and cannot be made to work with Roon. I’ve used several other neweer DACs with roon. I have no idea if they are roon certified, but they are recognized and work great.

I'd say any DAC less than 5 years old, and most DACs less than 10 years old, will work fine.

 

carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

I'll repeat what I said above in a different way:  You can't tell the roon to just send a signal and you'll have a device there to recieve it.  Roon has to see your device before it will send a signal.  it will see any device that doesn't require a driver to be installed (basicly anyting less than 10 years old).  

but you have to open Roon and "Select audio device" that you want roon to send digital data to.  If roon doesn't see your device, you're out of luck.  

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