Roon List of Roon-Exclusive Functions for WiiM Pro/Plus/App

[timmo]

Just curious, are your WiiMs hardwired to the network or WiFi?

That’s a good point - 2 are WiFi (Pro and Pro-Plus) and 1 is Ethernet (Pro). I also have a mesh WiFi network (Deco) which works extremely well compared to my old mesh network (SmartThings WiFi mesh) which gave me constant problems with my Sonos speakers. The Deco cleaned everything up for me and I couldn’t be happier with the change (well okay - I COULD be a bit happier …).

 

[Burnside]

I’m not a Roon user but from comments previously made in the forum, are you sure the WiiM devices are being picked up in Roon as Roon endpoints and not as Airplay, Chromecast or squeezelite endpoints? I recall those other options being used in Roon before the WiiM devices achieved certification and I could envision those options not syncing as you might expect.

 

[holsen]

I’m not a Roon user but from comments previously made in the forum, are you sure the WiiM devices are being picked up in Roon as Roon endpoints and not as Airplay, Chromecast or squeezelite endpoints? I recall those other options being used in Roon before the WiiM devices achieved certification and I could envision those options not syncing as you might expect.

Thanks to all the contributions here, it's all working! @timmo I also have a deco mesh network and decided to simply to factory reset both devices and go through the set up process with each again..... VOILA, They grouped and played in sync in WiiM so I ungrouped and regrouped them in Roon and I've got got musical bliss!
And Roon does identify each device by its playback capability. Most of my Sonos gear shows up twice, once as airplay and once as Sonosnet. One shows up as " Sonos Tested" and both WiiM's appear under Roon Ready

 

[slartibartfast]

Thanks to all the contributions here, it's all working! @timmo I also have a deco mesh network and decided to simply to factory reset both devices and go through the set up process with each again..... VOILA, They grouped and played in sync in WiiM so I ungrouped and regrouped them in Roon and I've got got musical bliss!
And Roon does identify each device by its playback capability. Most of my Sonos gear shows up twice, once as airplay and once as Sonosnet. One shows up as " Sonos Tested" and both WiiM's appear under Roon Ready

View attachment 20524

Good news. Does applying room correction or EQ affect the synchronisation? I expected it too but in my system it didn't.

 

[holsen]

Good news. Does applying room correction or EQ affect the synchronisation? I expected it too but in my system it didn't.

I don't know, I don't use any on device EQ. Both units are going out to external dacs so I don't add any color to them, they are both used purely as transports to DAC to Amp

 

[holsen]

I'm so happy with this result that another Sonos piece is coming out of the chain. Just pulled the trigger on an Amp Pro to replace a Sonos Connect: Amp that's been driving my patio speakers. Sonos "NewAppExperience" has been the best marketing ever for WiiM and Roon.

 

[timmo]

@holsen - I am so happy to hear you got it working

I bought a WiiM Ultra for the HDMI Arc port on the back. It helped me get rid of a Sonos Beam which I used to wirelessly send TV Audio over to a Port then into my Living Room AV. The Ultra to DAC to B&O Amps sounds amazing and the only drawback was that the WiiM Ultra coudn't group with the other Sonos devices. To solve the problem I just plugged the Sonos Port into the Optical In of the Ultra and when I wanted to group, I'd just change the wiim input and control all off ROON. It worked so well (Confidence in RAAT) that I bought 2 more WiiM devices so that everything on the ground floor could operate together without needing the Port. My Office, Living Room and Outdoor Patio are in a straight line to each other and I often play all three zones together. This WiiM set up is a DISASTER. Each Piece sound fantastic indidually, but together its a mess. I regret it, and now I'm going to try my luck with Bluesound Nodes on the ground floor and see if they'll play nice together.

I was re-reading again your earlier posts and if you’re curious (and maybe this isn’t related at all to your post above), I did a write-up a long long time ago about sync delays with Sonos and WiiM - the above post reminded me of it:

Post in thread 'Sonos Era 100 as powered speaker for WiiM'

Jan 4, 2024

An update to my experiment (in short: a failure). I got the Era 100 and love it - great sounding speaker. I updated my whole Sonos system from S1 to S2 (my Connect stays at S1). I was hoping to use the Era 100 as both a Sonos system speaker AND as just a ‘dumb’ powered speaker for WiiM using the line-in input. I was hoping to play music to all my WiiMs in sync, but the Era 100 has latency when using the line-in input (even if you’re not grouping it with any other Sonos speakers while playing WiiM via line-in). I should have researched this more prior to buying the Era 100 as I have...

• timmo

• 

 

[holsen]

@holsen - I am so happy to hear you got it working



I was re-reading again your earlier posts and if you’re curious (and maybe this isn’t related at all to your post above), I did a write-up a long long time ago about sync delays with Sonos and WiiM - the above post reminded me of it:

Post in thread 'Sonos Era 100 as powered speaker for WiiM'

Jan 4, 2024

An update to my experiment (in short: a failure). I got the Era 100 and love it - great sounding speaker. I updated my whole Sonos system from S1 to S2 (my Connect stays at S1). I was hoping to use the Era 100 as both a Sonos system speaker AND as just a ‘dumb’ powered speaker for WiiM using the line-in input. I was hoping to play music to all my WiiMs in sync, but the Era 100 has latency when using the line-in input (even if you’re not grouping it with any other Sonos speakers while playing WiiM via line-in). I should have researched this more prior to buying the Era 100 as I have...

• timmo

• 

Seems like we've been on a similar path. A couple of years ago I upgraded all my S1 stuff to S2. Got rid of a Connect for a Port and a couple of Play 3s got swapped out for an Era 300 and a second Play 5 I've got nothing running as a line into any of my streaming devices, WiiM or Sonos, they're all WiFi - Roon - DIrect. All the WiiM gear is downstairs so I can group it together. Likewise all the Sonos gear is upstairs so it can be grouped together.

In spite of my elation from this morning all is not perfect in WiiM world - better but not perfect. The Pro and Ultra have been grouped together in Roon for about 6 hours. Everything was in discernable sync for at least 3 hours. I left the system running, went out for a couple of hours and the two rooms had drifted apart. A simple stop and start of the stream put them back together. @criticowl described the same thing a few posts back. I can live with this. With the Sonos stuff, sometimes I'd have to restart the Roon Server and Roon would report ( Roon has lost control of the device(s)) I was never going to teach my wife how to get into the Roon Settings to force a restart. I can easily teach her to stop and start the music when two rooms are out of sync.!

 

[timmo]

Seems like we've been on a similar path. A couple of years ago I upgraded all my S1 stuff to S2. Got rid of a Connect for a Port and a couple of Play 3s got swapped out for an Era 300 and a second Play 5 I've got nothing running as a line into any of my streaming devices, WiiM or Sonos, they're all WiFi - Roon - DIrect. All the WiiM gear is downstairs so I can group it together. Likewise all the Sonos gear is upstairs so it can be grouped together.

I still have one S1 device (Connect) which has a WiiM Pro-Plus connected into it, and 6 other S2 speakers. I have a WiiM Pro connected into my Amazon Echo Studio (which sounds amazing to me), and another WiiM Pro connected into my Denon AVR. I was trying to prevent multiple ecosystems, but that didn’t work in my favor. In any event, I’m happy in the end to have all these choices of ecosystems to choose from! I’m not ready to bail on Sonos because getting the Deco mesh fixed those stability issues for me (obviously though not the whole Sonos app migration nightmare that continues).

In spite of my elation from this morning all is not perfect in WiiM world - better but not perfect. The Pro and Ultra have been grouped together in Roon for about 6 hours. Everything was in discernable sync for at least 3 hours. I left the system running, went out for a couple of hours and the two rooms had drifted apart. A simple stop and start of the stream put them back together. @criticowl described the same thing a few posts back. I can live with this. With the Sonos stuff, sometimes I'd have to restart the Roon Server and Roon would report ( Roon has lost control of the device(s)) I was never going to teach my wife how to get into the Roon Settings to force a restart. I can easily teach her to stop and start the music when two rooms are out of sync.!

Yeah - Roon can get flakey (I have mine on a dedicated NUC i7 16gb RAM with a very large library - need to double the memory or migrate to a mac mini at some point when life slows down). I don’t think it matters what Roon Core system you have though with Sonos, Sonos will ‘lose control of the devices’ from time to time and I just have to sit there and wait before I can start using those speakers again. Really wish Sonos was ‘Roon Ready’ but that will never happen. I do have to reboot my core periodically when it acts up (regardless of Sonos or Roon Ready endpoints being used). One thing with Sonos that has really helped is that I only group them in the Sonos app, then group in Roon … and to change volume I only do that in Sonos (rarely in the Roon app) … it has really made the experience better for me personally.

 

[ratty]

Yeah - Roon can get flakey (I have mine on a dedicated NUC i7 16gb RAM with a very large library - need to double the memory or migrate to a mac mini at some point when life slows down). I don’t think it matters what Roon Core system you have though with Sonos, Sonos will ‘lose control of the devices’ from time to time and I just have to sit there and wait before I can start using those speakers again. Really wish Sonos was ‘Roon Ready’ but that will never happen. I do have to reboot my core periodically when it acts up (regardless of Sonos or Roon Ready endpoints being used). One thing with Sonos that has really helped is that I only group them in the Sonos app, then group in Roon … and to change volume I only do that in Sonos (rarely in the Roon app) … it has really made the experience better for me personally.

In my experience the Roon server is not happy if a transport command (stop/pause, next, etc) is executed directly on the Sonos device, whether by tapping the speaker button, or using a Sonos controller, or via a third party remote. This routinely triggers the 'lost control of audio device' from Roon. One can if required simply restart play via Roon immediately.

Volume can be adjusted either way, on Sonos or on Roon. That said, adjusting on Sonos doesn't always modify the volume level shown in the Roon app. Sometimes it does, sometimes not. A Roon server restart clears the glitch but it's essentially a cosmetic one.

 

[criticowl]

In my experience the Roon server is not happy if a transport command (stop/pause, next, etc) is executed directly on the Sonos device, whether by tapping the speaker button, or using a Sonos controller, or via a third party remote. This routinely triggers the 'lost control of audio device' from Roon. One can if required simply restart play via Roon immediately.

Volume can be adjusted either way, on Sonos or on Roon. That said, adjusting on Sonos doesn't always modify the volume level shown in the Roon app. Sometimes it does, sometimes not. A Roon server restart clears the glitch but it's essentially a cosmetic one.

That makes sense... Roon really is expecting only Roon commands to control the endpoints. I've found that hitting the play/pause button on the WiiM Pros doesn't always work reliably too. Luckily, the volume control buttons do work reliably.

Speaking of which... It'd be awesome if the WiiM Pro devices could have a long press of the volume buttons to do track forward/back. It's great you can "override" them to do this but it'd be better if you could keep volume control and do track control. Obviously, you'd not be able to press and hold the volume buttons to ramp up the volume but in my experience people usually tap a volume button several times to change the volume anyway.

 

[timmo]

In my experience the Roon server is not happy if a transport command (stop/pause, next, etc) is executed directly on the Sonos device, whether by tapping the speaker button, or using a Sonos controller, or via a third party remote. This routinely triggers the 'lost control of audio device' from Roon. One can if required simply restart play via Roon immediately.

For me when I hit a transport command of stop/pause for Sonos, more (edit: math issue ) less often than not it just skips to the next track when I just want it to pause (so annoying). Sometimes it will actually pause though… probably 75% of the time. I don’t know why this simple function can’t work reliably. I’m more forgiving for skip/previous not working on Sonos because Roon flat out says don’t do that … not supported … but I thought stop/pause should be 100% honored

Volume control in Roon for Sonos always caused me problems in the past … maybe I’ll try it again.

I've found that hitting the play/pause button on the WiiM Pros doesn't always work reliably too. Luckily, the volume control buttons do work reliably.

But it should work reliably on WiiM Pros though because of ‘Roon Ready’ status? I don’t think I’ve run into this issue myself when playing Roon.

Speaking of which... It'd be awesome if the WiiM Pro devices could have a long press of the volume buttons to do track forward/back. It's great you can "override" them to do this but it'd be better if you could keep volume control and do track control. Obviously, you'd not be able to press and hold the volume buttons to ramp up the volume but in my experience people usually tap a volume button several times to change the volume anyway.

Great idea!

 

[ratty]

For me when I hit a transport command of stop/pause for Sonos, more (edit: math issue ) less often than not it just skips to the next track when I just want it to pause (so annoying). Sometimes it will actually pause though… probably 75% of the time. I don’t know why this simple function can’t work reliably. I’m more forgiving for skip/previous not working on Sonos because Roon flat out says don’t do that … not supported … but I thought stop/pause should be 100% honored

You're absolutely right: on a few occasions hitting 'pause' via Sonos does indeed advance Roon to the next track. A second 'pause' action is then required to force the issue with Roon, typically with a 'lost control' message.

'Roon Ready' devices such as WiiM should benefit from full transport control via the endpoint or its remote (as well as bit-perfect RAAT support). That certainly seems to be the case for WiiM Pro. My assumption with 'Roon Tested' devices like Sonos is that they ought to do what they're told by Roon as renderers, often with bit-depth/sample-rate compromises, but transport control is not necessarily bidirectional. I wish it was, but the absence of RAAT from the picture is probably the key. 'Sonos streaming' appears to use a randomly named FLAC file as the transfer mechanism.

Volume control in Roon for Sonos always caused me problems in the past … maybe I’ll try it again.

Well, volume control seems to be bidirectional for me, though as noted above the Roon server volume state shown in the Roon app can sometimes get out of sync with what the Sonos player is actually doing.

 

[holsen]

Alright, let's continue the story. Yesterday my new WiiM Amp Pro showed up to replace a Sonos Amp I just sold. Color me impressed. Man, it's got heft - looks and feels extremely well built. I plugged it in, set it up and prepared to adjust the sync settings - only to find there are none. So I fired it up and it came into perfect sync with the rest of the system. It's been running for about 13 hours and it's still perfectly timed. I made a couple tweaks to the sound with Roon's PEQ and it sounds amazing. The Sonos amp was said to have 125W per channel and this thing only 55 - I don't know, it's got plenty of punch and headroom and to my ears is driving the same speakers much better.

Bottom line, I'm very happy with this piece. I don't actually need any of the inputs for the way I'm going to use it, but for the extra $90, I'd say it's a strong buy.

 

[timmo]

If WiiM makes powered speakers too like someone else mentioned somewhere, that will be a ‘Sonos Killer’ for many folks. I have so much flexibility (and complexity) with my current setup of all these different devices. Always flipping between Sonos, WiiM, Roon and Plexamp apps … and most recently Home Assistant to bring it altogether (my dashboard is messy but I’m working on it). AirPlay is a great feature on the Pro and Pro-Plus because I can join Sonos speakers for the ride when I want to do that. Pro-Plus was my last (and final?) purchase … mainly because Ultra doesn’t have AirPlay and I don’t really need that screen anyways, especially now that Apple TV has a WiiM Home app.

 

[rcrawley]

Thank you. This a really great explanation but honestly, how can WiiM call these devices "Roon Ready" when RAAT doesn't just take care of syncing the endpoints. I was using Sonos gear, Ports, AMPs and Play 5's and they all just worked together - the only challenge being getting grouped with the one WiiM Ultra. But since the Ultra sounded so spectacular into an External Dac, I decided to eliminate one Sonos Amp, and connect a Pro to DAC to a pair of monoblocks - I sold the Sonos AMP so now I can't go back, but I must admit, I regret it.

I'll take some time tomorrow to use your suggestions and start dialing in the Ultra and Pro playing ROON using the manual sync. ---- Not ROON Ready.

You're absolutely right: on a few occasions hitting 'pause' via Sonos does indeed advance Roon to the next track. A second 'pause' action is then required to force the issue with Roon, typically with a 'lost control' message.

'Roon Ready' devices such as WiiM should benefit from full transport control via the endpoint or its remote (as well as bit-perfect RAAT support). That certainly seems to be the case for WiiM Pro. My assumption with 'Roon Tested' devices like Sonos is that they ought to do what they're told by Roon as renderers, often with bit-depth/sample-rate compromises, but transport control is not necessarily bidirectional. I wish it was, but the absence of RAAT from the picture is probably the key. 'Sonos streaming' appears to use a randomly named FLAC file as the transfer mechanism.


Well, volume control seems to be bidirectional for me, though as noted above the Roon server volume state shown in the Roon app can sometimes get out of sync with what the Sonos player is actually doing.

I've been running into this same issue and discussing it over on the Roon forums and worth re-sharing here.

After manually setting the sync delay on both WiiM devices (wired and wireless), no luck. Initially changing the delay works really well as expected to get everything in sync that first time. But after playing for a while the WiiM start to drift. So it’s not that they’re out of sync based on a delay; it’s that they get out of sync very gradually. I’ve tested with Roon Radio, playing single albums, local playlists, etc, and the drift is always there. The time it takes to start drifting seems to differ, though. Playing a single album will start to drift after about 30 mins give or take; playing a local playlist where it contains tracks of different formats and bitrates, it creeps in a bit more quickly, around 10-15 mins.

Pausing and starting does force the WiiM back into sync, but then it happens again. As mentioned in the other threads, I don't have drift on any other Roon endpoints -- Cambridge streamer; Ropieees, headless R-Pi's with Hifiberry amp hats, etc. It's only on the WiiMs and always reproducible.

Happy to test anything else that anyone might suggest…

 

[timmo]

But after playing for a while the WiiM start to drift. So it’s not that they’re out of sync based on a delay; it’s that they get out of sync very gradually. I’ve tested with Roon Radio, playing single albums, local playlists, etc, and the drift is always there. The time it takes to start drifting seems to differ, though. Playing a single album will start to drift after about 30 mins give or take; playing a local playlist where it contains tracks of different formats and bitrates, it creeps in a bit more quickly, around 10-15 mins.

When I play Roon to my Sonos devices (using Sonos streaming), it pretty much always stays in sync. This is my most often used listening scenario when using Roon, but the controls as mentioned above are annoying but I put up with it (I really wish this could be solved).

My 2nd scenario is playing SiriusXM from Apple TV 4K via Airplay to a combo of WiiM (Pro-Plus) and Sonos devices (Era 100s and 300) altogether. Here is where I experience ‘the drift’ and it’s really annoying. It pretty much follows your timings above, but this is with AirPlay (no Roon involved).

I don’t use my WiiM Roon Ready endpoints (I have 3) very often because it’s not my favorite/most convenient listening scenario, but when I did in the past it was always in sync. I’ll have to test it out again to re-confirm this is the case with my setup.

 

[Burnside]

I've been running into this same issue and discussing it over on the Roon forums and worth re-sharing here.

After manually setting the sync delay on both WiiM devices (wired and wireless), no luck. Initially changing the delay works really well as expected to get everything in sync that first time. But after playing for a while the WiiM start to drift. So it’s not that they’re out of sync based on a delay; it’s that they get out of sync very gradually. I’ve tested with Roon Radio, playing single albums, local playlists, etc, and the drift is always there. The time it takes to start drifting seems to differ, though. Playing a single album will start to drift after about 30 mins give or take; playing a local playlist where it contains tracks of different formats and bitrates, it creeps in a bit more quickly, around 10-15 mins.

Pausing and starting does force the WiiM back into sync, but then it happens again. As mentioned in the other threads, I don't have drift on any other Roon endpoints -- Cambridge streamer; Ropieees, headless R-Pi's with Hifiberry amp hats, etc. It's only on the WiiMs and always reproducible.

Happy to test anything else that anyone might suggest…

Have you submitted a ticket to WiiM when this happens so they can inspect your device logs for clues?