Help needed with relative level from Chromecast Audio to DAC using Roon

[suttondesign]

More on my continuing paring-down to essentials:

I found last week that I could use an old Mac Mini as a "roon bridge" so that I could avoid the 16-bit limitation of AirPlay. So, the Mac Mini was the roon bridge between a different Mac Mini server located elsewhere and a MiniDSP 4x10 which feeds my living room setup. Very easy to use via the roon app on my iPad.

Seeking to further reduce the footprint (and maybe sell the Mac Mini), I picked up a Chromecast Audio from eBay and substituted it for the Mac Mini roon bridge. Zero problems getting it going apart from having to fuss with a few settings in roon.

However, I have a weird problem: roon recognizes the Chromecast Audio, but the volume, on a sliding scale of 1-100, is heavily weighted towards 1-20, meaning it's hard to get fine volume gradations on the UI. I didn't have this problem using the Mac Mini as the roon bridge: the volume sweet-spot was spread out from 20-60 and thus easy to manipulate on the UI in Roon.

Question: is there some way to force either roon or Chromecast to spread out the relative volume more evenly over the 1-100 UI slider?

 

[PierreV]

Is the Chromecast set up to full dynamic range? (device settings, sound) Double check and set it if not.
I am not using roon anymore, but never had that issue when I did. Coud be a new bug too I guess.

 

[Jimbob54]

More on my continuing paring-down to essentials:

I found last week that I could use an old Mac Mini as a "roon bridge" so that I could avoid the 16-bit limitation of AirPlay. So, the Mac Mini was the roon bridge between a different Mac Mini server located elsewhere and a MiniDSP 4x10 which feeds my living room setup. Very easy to use via the roon app on my iPad.

Seeking to further reduce the footprint (and maybe sell the Mac Mini), I picked up a Chromecast Audio from eBay and substituted it for the Mac Mini roon bridge. Zero problems getting it going apart from having to fuss with a few settings in roon.

However, I have a weird problem: roon recognizes the Chromecast Audio, but the volume, on a sliding scale of 1-100, is heavily weighted towards 1-20, meaning it's hard to get fine volume gradations on the UI. I didn't have this problem using the Mac Mini as the roon bridge: the volume sweet-spot was spread out from 20-60 and thus easy to manipulate on the UI in Roon.

Question: is there some way to force either roon or Chromecast to spread out the relative volume more evenly over the 1-100 UI slider?

If you get the Google home /cast home app (whatever it's called now) you can control the cast volume from there. A circular dial which may behave differently than the roon app. You will see the same % reflected in roon.

Or, maybe do the volume on the roon side before the cast (one of the device set up options in roon)

 

[JEarle]

Try setting the ‘Safety Limit’ in the Roon settings for the Chromecast. Volume control remains the same length but will go from zero to whatever you set the max safety limit to.

Maybe set the max to 30. This means the volume slider will operate 0-30 giving triple the control resolution.

 

[suttondesign]

roon allows the device to set the max to 100 and will not allow a change. the google app has no option to change it either.

 

[Jimbob54]

roon allows the device to set the max to 100 and will not allow a change. the google app has no option to change it either.

Then try setting the device as fixed volume in roon and applying the roon volume (lets call it software volume for ease) instead

 

[JEarle]

roon allows the device to set the max to 100 and will not allow a change. the google app has no option to change it either.

Odd.

 

[suttondesign]

no, then it simply maxes out at a constrained volume because the device still allows 100.

 

[JEarle]

Guess I was confused as to what your were wanting to achieve. My apologies.

 

[suttondesign]

no problemo. my point was, all the volume i can realistically use is from 1-30, and i cannot seem to force the chromecast to recalibrate. not sure why this device does this and no others do.