Roon now streams to any Chromecast device! This includes the Google Home family of smart speakers, Chromecast and Chromecast Audio receivers, and a wide range of third party products. In addition to Roon Ready, AirPlay, Sonos, Linn, Devialet AIR, Squeezebox, and other network audio products, this new features boosts the number of Roon-compatible devices into the thousands.
If you have Chromecast devices, they will appear automatically in Roon’s Settings screen under the Audio tab.
With audio-only devices (like Google Home, Google Home Mini, Google Home Max, and Chromecast Audio) you can now enjoy gapless high-resolution music (up to 96kHz/24-bit) from Roon. On Chromecast devices with video (like Chromecast Gen 1, Gen 2, and Ultra), Roon displays album artwork, artist photos, and track information in addition to audio.
Roon supports grouped playback on Chromecast devices via the Google Home app. Using the Google Home app, you can set up groups of devices, which then appear as additional audio devices in Roon alongside the hardware devices. So for example, you could group a few Chromecasts into a “Whole House” or “Living Room + Patio” zone, enable them as separate Zones in Roon, then play to them freely.
When using Google hardware, standard Chromecast controls also work. This means that Android devices display Play/Pause controls in your notifications, and both Android and iOS devices offer transport controls via the Google Home app.
Other improvements
In addition to Chromecast streaming, today’s release includes improvements to some of the other protocols Roon supports, including Sonos playback, AirPlay 2 compatibility, LMS discovery, and Devialet AIR on Expert Pro.
We’ve also integrated the latest version of the MQA Core Decoder, improved the way Roon handles partial albums from TIDAL (so you can easily find complete albums from TIDAL tracks you’ve added), and rolled out a long list of bug fixes.