HI I use the following…
NUC 7i7BHN running core on windows 10 8 gig of ram 120gig SSD - powered by linear PSU -I also use NUC for general computing.
Connected via ethernet (cat6)- through a couple of gigabit switches
ND555 connects via its endpoint
Control via android phone.
I also use Roon DSP to obviate some room boom from speakers … works very well.
I really like the Etude, it has a very natural sound - I think it is the best power amplifier I have ever owned.
I use loudspeakers mostly, but occasionally headphones
Thanks CG that is great news
I suspect the answer is ‘no’, but when streaming Qobuz tracks from the internet, is there a setting for buffer state (degree of buffering for current track) or to display the waveform at all?
In honesty I’ll be listening to the audio not watching the bar most of the time, but I’ve not found such setting on a quick scout around.
No you cant change the buffering to my knowledge. None of the streaming services provide waveforms as Roon cant analyse them on the suppliers servers and no info is provided from them. Waveforms only appear for you own local music as they are analysed on ingest.
Yes, they couldn’t analyse the stream from somewhere else, unless it was completely buffered locally prior to playback starting - I could actually imagine that they might not be allowed to do certain things with the full streams contractually in case it provided a back door to the full audio data for a track.
Not tried any local music yet as my external drive is disconnected, but thanks for clarifying it’s not a setting I’m missing!
This is very interesting. I’ve also had a graph made at one point. I wonder if I could import something like that into REW, combine with my room acoustics into a single roon filter that would compensate for both… I guess it would sound lousy to everyone with a different hearing profile, but not sure anyone else cares as much as I do about these things in my house.
What I haven’t figured out is how to produce a sort of ‘negative’ of the hearing loss graph on Roon DSP to cancel it out. You can boost a specific frequency, or boost everything above or below a selected frequency, but that seems to be about it.
I was going to give REW a try at some point for potential room correction. I have no idea if it has other tools to produce a custom graph (other that from a Umic) but it looks like some sort of third party software might be required to get the curve you want on the Roon DSP graph.
Probably a last couple of question if you don’t mind before I choose between one of these (i7-7500U)and a (possibly slightly faster) Intel Baby Canyon NUC715BNH with 8Gb RAM and an m.2 system SSD card.
Were you able to install Roon Rock and get it up and running successfully without any tweaking whatsoever - since as you mention the configuration is not officially supported by Roon?
Although an i7 (or indeed an i5) might be considered a bit over the top for my local collection of some 2000+ albums, I also subscribe to Tidal Hi-Fi. I would assume that the overhead on Roon with such an extensive external library would be significant. Have you noticed any performance issues given that you too use Tidal?
The Tranquil PC looks very tempting, although the i5 NUC would possibly be a bit faster and just a little cheaper with the option of transferring the board to a fanless case from Asaka (not as pretty as the TranquilPC case) if fan noise proves to be intrusive.
Yes Rock installed in a matter of minutes via usb stick. It was painless. Roon say they can’t offer support or guarantee it will work on other hardware, but to be honest there is very little to go wrong and they have helped others when asked. It’s just built with limited driver support. They just built it around the NUC to keep support limited to one set of hardware. But as I said it generaly works perfectly fine on the majority of modern intel chipsets The only issues some have had was with the next gen of NUCSs and pc’s that had newer network card chipset but they patched that recently and it’s not an issue now. They will still support you for Roon itself regardless of it being a MOCK (thats whats it’s generally referred to as on the forum)
I have about 200+ CDs of my own out of 36000 tracks the rest is in Tidal and no I have no issues with my library being slow, intact the only time it was it was down to Roons own servers.
Go with what you feel happy with, if your not comfortable with that fact that Rock might not work with a future update which is possible and what they give as a reason for not supporting it then go with a NuC. I am happer to deal with this if it ever happens,but as they will always have to support the current crop of Nucleus and NUCs so I can’t see what would break
I would aim to get the fastest CPU I could. Roon will only ever get heavier and nobody ever said “darn my computer is too quick!”. Also a faster CPU allows you to under clock the CPU now in the bios if the noise is too high from the fans.
I’d have to disagree, I cant see it getting heavier par se as it would alienate a large sector of the user base they can add so much more that wont add to the load of the machine that much. The bigger your library, more endpoints requiring full DSP are the things that will push it beyond what even a NUC can do. My old i3 could handle 6 end points all streaming together, two with upsampling to DSD 128 all at the same time and never drop a beat. That said the new NUC’s are supposed to be pretty amazing over the 7th gen that is currently supported.it does work on the 8th gen but they have not officially say they support it. But yes if you can afford the tip NUC they support by all means go for it.
I’ve just built a Rock box on a NUC7i5DNK with 8GB Ram and 120GB SSD, I built it into an Asaka Plato X7D fanless case. It it went together pretty easily and the Rock install guide got me there with no issues. I also moved my library to a NAS at the same time. My motivation was primarily to get noisy hard discs out of the listening room as I previously ran a MacBook into an nDAC vis a USB/SPDIF converter. All in now ethernet connected too via a CISCO switch.
The fanless NUC was put together for under 300GBP and has been absolutely solid in use so far. Although I built it fanless to reduce noise the Rock server is likely to end up in the ‘cupboard under the stairs’ along with the NAS’s and Cisco Ethernet switch but for now its working very well as an endpoint in its own right replacing the MBP directly.
Next step is likelty to be an NDX with a Sonore UPNP bridge or a brand new ND5XS2.
Have they dropped in price significantly then or was that 2nd hand I could not get all the parts for under 600 when I last looked that’s why I went for a ready built model . Looking on google it’s over 300 just for the NUC if you can find one that is 7th series getting hard to find in the UK.
Although the Tranquil PC was very tempting, I have in the end plumped for a NUC (8i5BEH) with a Samsung 970 Evo m.2 SSD and 8Gb Crucial Ballistix SODIMM RAM. Total cost £450.
Word on the forums is that the fan on the new 8th gen NUCs is significantly less obtrusive than that on the earlier 7th gen NUCs, so I’ve taken a chance that this is the case. I know that the Samsung 970 Evo Plus m.2 SSD will be available in the shops over the next couple of weeks, but I’m pretty sure the increased performance won’t matter at all, and the new SSDs apparently get very hot indeed.
Thanks very much for the help so far - I just might need some more when I get the hardware & install Roon Rock and its control components.
Glad you made a choice. Happy to help if you get stuck at all but it really is the easiest thing to do. Just make sure that that model can boot from legacy boot and not just UEFI some of the new NUCs only allow UEFI boot and ROCK won’t work with UEFI.
The NUC7i5DNK with 8GB ram and 120GB SSD I bought was £250 on eBay brand new a couple of weeks ago. There was also on top a 10% discount code at the time. The fanless case was about £80 after the same discount code I think.
Thanks for the warning - had me a little worried for a while.
However, having looked at a number of threads in the Roon forum, I have come across a number of people who have successfully installed Roon Rock on NUC8i7BEH and NUC8i3BEH devices. Indeed one of them mentioned that he could not get the install to work until he went into the BIOS and switched boot mode from the default ‘UEFI’ to ‘Legacy’. I would hope that the BIOS used in my NUC8i5BEH will be identical to those in the i7 and i3 8th gen models.
Good price, I guess as they are being replaced with the gen8’s.
I think they do remove legacy in some bios updates on the GEN8 hardware. So I would not bother with updating the bios that stage just in case. It does say to do so in the KB about installing ROCK, but that really is for the older gen 6 models that where about when ROCK came about and can be ignored.