You should consider a Small Green Computer Sonic Transporter i5, which is fabless and basically plug and play.
As far as Roon Radio, it now pulls from your own library, as well as anything related in Tidal or Qobuz, if you have a subscription.
I would recommend a recent iMac, it’s plug and play, works when the iMac is in standby (not sleep) , and the all important Roon process multiplier when undertaking any sort of DSP such MQA processing , EQ on PCM or the resource heavy EQ processing of DSD is healthily high…from memory the ranges go between 7x as the most intensive on DSD DSP and normally around 30x
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Thanks - but as you will see if you follow this thread or have a look at my previous post, I am now up and running successfully with Roon Rock installed on an 8i5 Intel NUC.
Roon Radio is indeed excellent, and brings up music from Tidal as well as from my own collection.
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Yes, I realized that once I’d worked my way through the thread. Perhaps it will help someone else. It also comes with Sonore’s upnp bridge software which is useful if you have one of the older Naim streamers and wish to use it with Roon.
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Again off topic I’m afraid because it doesn’t concern Naim streamers, but it does relate to my implementation of Roon.
My Google Chromecast and HDMI to Opt SPDIF splitter arrived today, so I now have my 4th Roon endpoint set up (Chromecast via splitter to Marantz NA7004 internal DAC). The Marantz NA7004/Audiolab 8000A/Ruark Epilogue bedroom system is sounding better than it ever did (despite whatever limitations Chromecast introduces), and I can now use Roon as a control point (bringing in Tidal) and allowing me to get rid of the pretty dreadful Marantz IOS app.
Roon is definitely working for me.
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Yep this is one of its biggest strengths, allowing so many different audio systems to work via one software solution.
- What hardware hosts your Roon Core (Intel NUC, Mac, PC) ?
Mac Mini 2012 i5 - Do you use Roon Rock or have you installed the Core on top of an operating system (MacOS, Windows, Linux, etc.)?
Running on MacOs - Where is you Roon Core located? Near your HiFi or somewhere far on your network?
Different room, but all connected via cable - How is your Roon Core connected to your streamer? WiFi or Ethernet?
Ethernet cable, via the router of course
- What hardware hosts your Roon Core (Intel NUC, Mac, PC) ?
MacBook Pro i7 (dedicated to Roon) with Audioquest Jitterbug USB connected DASD with music library and also another Audioquest Jitterbug USB connecting a local Chord Hugo 2 for headphone listening in study. - Do you use Roon Rock or have you installed the Core on top of an operating system (MacOS, Windows, Linux, etc.)?
Running on MacOs Mojave - Where is you Roon Core located? Near your HiFi or somewhere far on your network?
Study (one floor above Naim streamer) - How is your Roon Core connected to your streamer? WiFi or Ethernet?
WiFi - Google mesh WiFi (3 node mesh) - works flawlessly - have streamed DSD128 over this no problem.
I have 4 WD NAS systems, WD EX4 (2), WD DL4100, WD PR 4100. Will they work with Roon? I have 4 different databases on each server, each one is 12TB. Very time consuming when looking for a particular song, today I have to search each server separately if I don’t remember where it is exactly.
If you run Roon (on another box) you can attach each music share to Roon and it will create a single database for you. From what I see it will remove duplicates showing them as versions but let you choose which one is the primary. This will take a very long time!
Phil
Roon makes it very easy to search for your media and it allows you to create virtual copies of media into your collection - such that Tidal, Qobuz albums/EPs/Singles are treated as being in your personal collection when setting preferences, searching and modifying meta data - and it also handles duplicates well - and lets you choose which is the primary version or delete from database. You can modify meta data - and elect whether to use Roon’s meta data or the meta data your provided when ripping or combinations thereof.
Ok Thanks Simon!
if you have a very large library then you really need to look at a high good i7 cpu to manage you library. They also recommend using Windows as the OS for the core if you in the 100’s of thousands for tracks count.
Any compatibility issues with Roon and WD NAS systems?
Roon can access multiple drives on your network, but to be fair, so can most UPnP servers, so this is not a USP! Not that I mean to criticise Roon, what is does, it seems to do very well in my experience, and in a very user friendly way.
Do you guys use HQPlayer with Roon? If so, how do you like it?
I am currently on the 14-day Roon trial and find that the Roon sounds slight worse than the Linn Kazoo into my Linn Klimax (with Katalyst), so I am looking for way to make it sound at least as good as the sound directly from the Linn Kazoo,
I have a music library of approx 22k local tracks add a few thousand virtual tracks, and use an iMac/OS X to run Roon Core in the background and it’s absokutely fine, navigation is effectively instant. I have Roon Core Access my media share NAS over the Ethernet using DNS… it all works perfectly… including DSP on DSD which seems to be the most relatively CPU demanding…
I am at 81k tracks stored locally, of which just half are 24-bit PCM/DSD64/MQA. Roon Core is running on a NUC5i3 using ROCK, and runs just fine, responsive, new tracks added instantly etc.
It will perform format conversion of DSD128 & DSD256 down to DSD64, and PCM 24/384 (DXD) to 24/192, so basically plays everything I want, through the Sonore UPnP bridge to NDS/555DR network player.
At only 15W TDP the processor will be staying relatively cool for the majority of the time, normal streaming, so the Fan won’t be kicking it.
The i5 and particularly the i7 NUC will generate much more heat, needing the standard fan on more often, given the size of case and thermodynamic properties.
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Advice please for NDS with Roon. I would really apreciate it. I am a total layman so would appreciate simplicity
I want to us Roon as I am very disaitisfied with Naim app.
How do I set this up?
I have a Sunology NAS DS218j, NDS and Minimac
My questions are these:
Core questions:
- Can I run Roon on the NAS ? I understand that Roon core should be on a SSD which I could add, however is there enough RAM on the DS218j? I think not…unfortunately as it does not have enough RAM and Armada 385 processor
- My Minimac is 2011, CPU 2.Ghz i5 with 8GB Ram but has no SSD; could I run the core on this as it has no SSD?
- So if I cannot use these what is the cheapest option: I see Wilco recommended SONICTRANSPORTER I5? Or should I just buy anoth minimac so I can use it for other things
Roon talking to my NDS
- How do I get the Roon RAAT to communicate with uPnp to my NDS. I understand that there are various devices for this?
- Can this all be done without altering the SQ?
Thanks in advance, this is a bit of nightmare and all driven from frustration with the Naim app.
To be honest to get the most out of Roon you might need to upgrade your streamer. The way Roon works it (can) distribute 32 bit stereo samples to the end points via Ethernet, which is how it works with the new streamers.
With the old streamers you would need a RAAT client that downsamples the media to 24 bit to then distribute via UPnP or SPDIF to your NDS … and if the latter the quality of the client will become pivotal to the overall SQ performance and so you will need a precision device to get the best from it.
I think using any of these downsampling client methods is going to give a slight hit on SQ, unless you disable all the media processing and conditioning aspects of Roon Core which is a big part of it.
If you run a subset of the Roon Core features without any of the media processing or conditioning, you will probably fine running on a NAS if supported. To get the most from Roon Core you will need to run on faster processors with floating point arithmetic units like the higher IntelCore iSeries processors