Mac Mini M2 8 Go for Roon

Thanks. FYI, Audirvāna Studio is working on my 2010 Mini :slightly_smiling_face:

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Although once you’re using Roon to manage all you music resources, I wonder how easy it’d be to extract yourself….? Eg Thinking of Naim UnitiServe users with large .wav libraries wanting to move to .flac.

For the same sort of money I’d be thinking of an Innuos Zen Mini Mk III running the Innuos software , but perhaps I’m missing the Roon point somewhat. :smirk:.

Note, I’m not a Roon user, just thinking aloud and would agree with your stated position.

ATB, J

With Roon, I have a mix of Flac & Wav files. I normally store them on external NVMe drives for fast read/write. I do have some on a NAS as well but I’ll probably move them to a new NVMe before long and connect that directly to the M2 as well. One device running instead of two.

Edit…
The M2 Mac mini is £850 (16gb)… I thought the Innuos Mini Mk iii was a lot more than that?

Mac Mini M1 8Gb here running Roon Server streaming to my Atom HE and runs flawless and without any interruptions over here. I would not spend the extra 230 Euro for 16Gb unless you plan to run other programs as well. I have added some stats and performance information about my Mac Mini playing Kraftwerk.

BR,
Richard

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Total overkill.

Thanks

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Why?

I push out to five zones from a 2011 i5 8GB mini.

Ok, i have a 2010 one:

That works well indeed, but when you start using Roon’s DSP options, you run out of processing power more quickly.

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A Mac mini is easy to sell or re-purpose with other software.

A Mini M2 + Audirvana Origin in UPnP-mode (one-time-purchase) would be cheaper than Nucleus One plus Roon licenses. Only did a short test but the sound was excellent - unfortunately I had no time to test with the Naim app.

I got an M1 8GB RAM Mini a few years ago - too impatient to wait for a build to order one with 16GB RAM.

8GB just isn’t enough for me without it slowing to a crawl every so often due to memory issues - my older Macs had more memory and didn’t have such issues.

I do generally have multiple Safari winodws open along with Mail client, Notes and Messages but often not a lot more.

Don’t forget the macOS itself will use a not insignificant of the memory so in practice you don’t have 8GB for apps to begin with, the system will reduce available RAM for apps.

When I had Roon the 8GB Mini was absolutely useless trying to run Roon alongside the other apps using not infrequently 2-3GB RAM.

For the OP - if it’s just for Roon running headless it would probably be fine, but if you want to use Roon alongside some fairly basic apps regularly I’d opt for 16GB RAM.

I got rid of Roon partly as I rarely used it, partly as the 8GB Mini wasn’t up to the job with other apps running.

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8GB is plenty with ROON. But honestly, unless you’re skint or have found a great deal on an 8GB model, I would spend the extra and go with 16GB (and a larger drive - at least no less than 526GB) as your resale value/repurposing value will be much greater.

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It’s for a dedicated player, I already owns a MBP14 M3 16 Gb / 1 Gb Audirvana right know & maybe Roon, the reason for change, I ordered a M2 with 16 Gb.

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My actual Mini is the 2010 one :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:, I don’t intend to sell it.

You hava a point there: if you use the Mac Mini only as a headless Roon server, like I do, 8Gb should be more than enough. If you want to run multiple other apps at the same time I would also opt for 16Gb of internal memory.

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I’ve ordered a 16 Gb, for a device that will only use Audirvana or Roon, on a single room, just to keep it as long as possible, maybe not 14 years but :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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And to reply to myself, £500 for a plastic box, Intel NUC motherboard and add your own storage actually does seem rather a lot……:unamused:

ATB, J

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Does it include a year’s Roon subscription?

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