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!