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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
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.

 

jjss49's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
jjss49
6,612 posts
 

a dac doesn't need to be roon ready

but a streamer does... roon feeds streamer (roon endpoint) which in turn feed dac

(bear in mind some units combine the streamer and the dac in one box, but they are two different functions being performed in the same chassis)

mwsl OP
52 posts
 

JJSS49…..helpful. “A DAC doesn’t need to be Roon ready.”

I also realized that I made a mistake (newby, sorry). I forgot that the Nucleus would connect to a DAC via its USB output, rather than ethernet. So question #2 is moot. Seems like question #1 has been answered.

I’ll see if my friend would be willing to come over again with his DAC, and I’ll just plug my Roon into his DAC via USB. 

Still would be curious if anybody has a guess about the answer to question #3.

thanks.

tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,544 posts
 

I’m not sure about that, jjss49. The roon nucleus is a streamer. You connect it to a streamerless DAC that is roon ready and the DAC will play whatever the nucleus streams to it. I do this myself with an Esoteric SACD player that has no streaming capabilities.

I think that there are DACs that are not roon ready that will accept a stream from the nucleus but I can’t swear to it. I’d look around the roon website and forums for an answer to this.

 

sns
3,003 posts
 

There is no such thing as Roon ready dac. Nucleus has hdmi, usb and ethernet ports. HDMI for use in system with non-usb dac, usb for ANY usb ported dac. Generally speaking, dac is more important than server to final sound quality, not to say Innuous wasn't contributing to sq. Still, Nucleus is pretty nice server, I'd not be thinking it weak link in chain.

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