How To Correct Your Hearing With Roon And ARIA ONE

What This Does

This guide shows how to route Roon through ARIA ONE on Mac or Windows. Roon plays into a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads that signal, applies your hearing correction, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers.

Roon plays to zones rather than directly to an output. For this setup, the virtual audio device becomes a zone on the computer running ARIA ONE, and you play to that zone.

Before You Start

You need the Roon app and ARIA ONE installed on the Mac or Windows computer you listen from, plus an Altitude Audio account. If you do not have one yet, ARIA ONE can create it the first time you open the app. Your Roon Core can run on this computer or on another machine, as long as the Roon app is open on the computer you are listening at.

Open ARIA ONE and sign in. On first launch, choose Cloud Mode so your profiles and presets stay in sync across devices.

Use the INSTANT Onboarding Pathway

On first launch, ARIA ONE opens onboarding automatically. To get listening quickly, choose the Instant pathway and continue. Available pathways include:

• Instant — no test. ARIA ONE loads an age-matched hearing profile so you can finish onboarding and start listening immediately.
• Quick Results — the full hearing test without setup and calibration. Around ten minutes.
• Full Accuracy — the complete test with setup and calibration. Fifteen to twenty minutes, and the best result.

Use Instant to finish onboarding now with an age-matched profile. When you have more time, come back to SETUP and take the full test so ARIA ONE can replace it with a profile built from your own results. At the end, choose Simple View for music listening.

Set Up The Audio Routing In ARIA ONE

ARIA ONE needs to sit between Roon and your physical output. Roon plays into a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads from that device, applies correction, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers.

If you have not installed a virtual audio device yet, start here: what is a virtual audio device and which one should I install? That page covers the setup on Mac and Windows. Install it before opening Roon, because Roon detects audio devices when it starts.

Then open Audio Settings from the gear in ARIA ONE. Set INPUT to the virtual audio device and OUTPUT to your headphones or speakers. Set the sample rate here to match the virtual audio device; 44.1 or 48 kHz is a safe choice.

Point Roon At ARIA ONE

Roon does not follow your computer’s system output. It plays to whichever zone you choose, so you make the virtual audio device a zone and then play to it. The steps are the same on Mac and Windows.

Open Roon Settings and go to Audio. Under the section for devices connected to this computer, find the virtual audio device and click Enable. Give it a name you will recognise, such as “ARIA ONE”. It is now a zone.

Then click the zone picker in the bottom right of the Roon window and choose the zone you just created. Roon plays into the virtual audio device, and ARIA ONE takes it from there. Your other zones are not affected.

Roon Settings To Check

Roon has a lot of processing built in, and all of it happens before the audio reaches ARIA ONE. These settings are per zone, so changing them for the ARIA ONE zone leaves your other zones alone. Open the zone’s Device Setup from the zone picker.

Volume Leveling. Set it to Off. ARIA ONE works best when Roon is not adjusting tracks before output, so 0 dB into ARIA ONE is actually 0 dB. ARIA ONE handles track-to-track level changes itself, and Adaptive Drive can find the right drive for each song.

DSP. Leave it off for this zone. Roon’s equalisers, crossfeed, convolution, and sample-rate conversion all change the sound before your correction sees it. If you use a convolution filter for room or headphone correction, move that job into ARIA ONE instead: the Corrective EQ module sits after the hearing correction stage, which is where room and headphone correction belong.

Volume control. Set the zone’s volume control to Fixed, or leave Roon’s volume at 100. This keeps the signal into ARIA ONE at full level.

Sample Rate Is Handled For You

Roon’s library mixes sample rates. With Exclusive Mode off and DSP off, Roon hands each track to your operating system, and the operating system converts it to whatever rate the virtual audio device is set to. There is nothing to manage in Roon.

Keep two things matched: the rate on the virtual audio device and the rate in ARIA ONE’s Audio Settings. 44.1 or 48 kHz is a stable choice for both.

If you want to confirm what Roon is doing, click Signal Path next to the track title while music is playing. It shows the source file, any processing Roon applied, and the device it was sent to.

Check That It Is Working

Play a track in Roon. The input meter along the bottom of ARIA ONE should move with the music. If it does, Roon is reaching ARIA ONE and the routing is correct.

Toggle the correction off and on to hear the difference. In Simple View, open Sound and tap PERSONAL AUDIO / ORIGINAL AUDIO. In Advanced View, use Bypass in the top bar. Listen for clarity, detail, and changes in the sound image.

If the meter does not move, the routing is not complete. Confirm ARIA ONE’s INPUT is the virtual audio device, and that the zone selected in Roon is the one you created for it.

Network Zones Bypass The Chain

Roon can play to Roon Ready streamers, Roon Bridge, AirPlay speakers, Chromecast, and Sonos zones. When you play to one of those, the audio goes from your Roon Core straight to that device over the network. It never passes through the computer running ARIA ONE, so nothing is corrected.

Keep Roon on the ARIA ONE zone. If ARIA ONE’s input meter is still and the music is playing, check the zone picker first.

If You Want Corrected Audio On A Speaker In Another Room

Let ARIA ONE send to the speaker instead of Roon. Connect your computer to the speaker first, over AirPlay or Bluetooth, so it shows up as an output device on the computer. Keep Roon playing to the ARIA ONE zone, and in ARIA ONE’s Audio Settings set OUTPUT to that speaker. Roon plays into the virtual device, ARIA ONE corrects it, and the corrected audio goes out to the speaker.

This lasts only as long as the connection does. If the AirPlay or Bluetooth session drops, the computer goes to sleep, or the speaker is turned off, the speaker disappears as an output and ARIA ONE falls back to another device. When that happens, reconnect to the speaker and set ARIA ONE’s OUTPUT to it again.

Using It Day To Day

Once the zone is set up, daily use is simple: open ARIA ONE, open Roon, pick the ARIA ONE zone, and listen. You can still use Roon Remote on your phone or tablet to control playback; the audio still plays through the zone you selected.

If you switch between headphones and speakers, save a preset for each in ARIA ONE. The correction that works for one usually is not right for the other.

When you have time, rerun SETUP and take the full hearing test. ARIA ONE replaces the Instant profile with one built from your own measurements.

What About Your Phone

This routing works on Mac and Windows only. Roon ARC on iPhone or Android plays on the phone, and phones do not let one app capture another app’s audio, so ARC cannot be routed through ARIA ONE.

On mobile, ARIA ONE can still play music files you own with your correction applied using its built-in player. Your hearing profile stays synced across devices.

Common Problems

Known-Good Details

Roon changes menu names and placement on its own schedule. Everything in this list was accurate when this page was last updated. If a setting has moved, look for it by name; the routing logic above is unchanged.

• Enabling a zone — Roon Settings, Audio. Devices on this computer are listed under a heading for this Mac or PC. Click Enable next to the device, then name it.
• Zone picker — the speaker icon in the bottom right of the Roon window. Shows every enabled zone, local and network.
• Device Setup — from the zone picker, click the gear next to the zone. Contains Volume Leveling, volume control mode, and under Advanced, Exclusive Mode.
• DSP — from the zone picker, click the DSP button, or open it from the volume popup. Per zone. Contains Headroom Management, Sample Rate Conversion, Parametric EQ, Procedural EQ, Crossfeed, and Convolution.
• Signal Path — the small coloured dot next to the track title in the footer. Lists every stage the audio passed through and the device it was delivered to.
• Roon Remote — controls playback from a phone or tablet. Does not move the audio; it still plays through the selected zone.
• Roon ARC — plays on the phone itself. Cannot be routed through ARIA ONE.
• ARIA ONE Audio Settings — the gear in the top bar. INPUT, OUTPUT, and sample rate are all set here.

Summary

Roon routes through ARIA ONE as a zone: enable the virtual audio device in Roon’s Audio settings, name it, and play to it. ARIA ONE reads from that device, applies your hearing profile, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers. For that zone, leave Exclusive Mode off, set Volume Leveling to Off, leave DSP off, keep the virtual audio device and ARIA ONE on the same sample rate, and keep Roon on the ARIA ONE zone rather than a network zone. To hear corrected audio on a speaker elsewhere, connect the computer to it over AirPlay or Bluetooth and choose it as ARIA ONE’s OUTPUT.