Hello Everyone,
I have all my music files stored on a NAS. I’m confused about where I should install the Roon Core - NAS or in my case, Mac Mini? Is there an advantage installing on one or the other? I still use my Mac daily so is there anything else I should be doing?
Kind regards
A Mac Mini is likely to make a better Roon Core than a NAS. A basic NAS capable of running a UPnP server is nowhere near enough.
I would use the Mac Mini to run the Roon Server.
If you a Mac Mini, use that.
Unless you are using involved complex DSP with several concurrent end points, you don’t need much computer power at all with Roon Core (despite what some seem to say) . However does like fast speed disk / memory access, and works best with SSD storage for its database, and this can be a challenge on lesser NAS systems, though some are fine, and Core is ported for some NAS types such as some QNAP models.
I run mine in the background on my iMac, and takes up no noticeable resources at all.
If your nas is on 24x7 and powerful enough to run the core, it would permit you to schedule Roon’s backups to the mac over night as the mac will wake up when the backup kicks off. I use a roon specific account on my mac and have the core sign on while I’m asleep each day.
With the core on the Mac, i think you might need to schedule a wakeup of Mac in order to run a backup unless you run them manually. Maybe @Simon-in-Suffolk could confirm as they run their core on a Mac?
on the iMac I leave it on - and it goes into standby when not being used - however the Core backups when in standby. I send my backups to the NAS (kind of what a NAS if for 
)
Indeed. I use my Mac so it’s then swept up by my cloud backup service as they did not have a widget for my nas.
In that scenario, would it be detrimental in audio quality to have the files on a separate NAS? My collection would never fit on my Mac Mini.
@Simon-in-Suffolk Does Roon allow for the files on a separate NAS? My collection would never fit on my Mac Mini.
Yes, under the storage settings in Roon you can add external nas folders for your music library.
I did not notice any audio difference during the short time that i ran a nas/mac setup.
No audio quality won’t be affected.
Yes, as long as the device you have Roon running supports network file system mounts, you can have your files anywhere where they can be mounted from.
I am running Roon Core on my NAS, a QNAP. I have 6947 albums in my collection and have no problems whatsoever. Access is fast, the system is very responsive. Having said that, I do not use any DSP and my NAS does not do anything else but serve music files. As Simon mentions, the Roon database resides on an SSD drive on the NAS.
I have Roon core running on an old intel NUC in the loft. i5, 8gb RAM and 250gb NVME. All the music is stored on 2 QNAP NAS units. Works fine. Impressed with it.
