Finally pulled the trigger on the nd5 xs2

I will try. :slight_smile:

My memory of such things can be short, unless itā€™s an OMG difference.

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I am up and running. Roon ROCK is online and playing Qobuz while my music files (CD rips and 24-bit FLAC file) copy over from a backup USB drive. Sadly I have to copy them over the network, so that will take a while (about 350-400 GB). I was able to restore a backup of my library database directly from the USB with it attached to the NUC, so creating that last backup before migration to a USB drive is recommended.

Using the instructions at the Roon Knowledge Base, I went from parts (NUC, RAM, M.2 SSD, SATA3 SSD) to playing Qobuz on my NDX2 within about an hour (Iā€™m a software engineer so somewhat technically inclined). That included updating the BIOS and configuring it. I did some reading in advance and had the bios file, ROCK installer, and required codec file ready to go on flash drives (this is all covered in the docs).

Pretty painless and I saved $2000 over getting a Nucleus+, with as good or better performance.

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Thanks for sharing. Personally I love the ideal of building my own specialized box for my music collection. Granted my Mac Mini with a fast SSD drive has been wonderful but its a general purpose machine. I take a small performance hit when TimeMachine does it thing for instance. Let me know if you notice any sound quality improvements. Iā€™d think there would be but likely not ā€œnight and dayā€

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I am happy to share my assessment. Looks like weather will ruin my cycling plans for the week, so Iā€™ll just have to open the wine cellar and geek out on music gear and enjoying tunes.

The rest of my digital library should copy overnight. Tomorrow Iā€™ll have a fully restored and ready to go Roon library running on the NUC.

Thanks for the great info Joaquinā€¦looks like Iā€™ll be taking a very similar route to you, if not the exact same.

Iā€™ll trial roon once I get the nd5 then, as i suspect, Iā€™ll get the full subscription and put the core on a nuc (maybe i5ā€¦ since I probably wonā€™t be doing the DSP stuffā€¦ maybe :woozy_face:)

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Iā€™m still sorting out whether ot not to use the DSP stuff, but I have no regrets spending the extra on the i7 processor.

I have two Roon DSP configs. One that upsamples for DAD128 output and one that does no DSP conversions at all. I still need to do some comparisons to see which sounds better (if either). Right now Iā€™m just too hyped up from work all day. I might need to crack open that Zin waiting for me on the kitchen counter. :slight_smile:

So does your ROCK sound better than your previous Mac Mini?

I didnā€™t notice anything obvious. It just works out better for me. With ROCK on a NUC itā€™s an appliance. I donā€™t have to worry about anything. It works, it updates itself, it backs up the library automatically and I can use my Mac Mini for other stuff.

A few hours ago I brought home a S/H XPS-DR from my dealer to audition. Now that is completely transformative. I doubt itā€™s getting returned.

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Thanks for the info and congrats on your new purchased!

LOLā€¦itā€™s not purchased yet, but it was the wife who said it first, ā€œthis is so much better.ā€ She actually cried about it, hoping it wouldnā€™t be better and we wouldnā€™t have to spend the money. True story (but we really can afford to buy it with cash anyway, so no worries. She loves it all too).

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