Yes.
Either buy a new NAS drive with enough processing speed to run Roon properly, or keep your NAS drive and add a new device with the processing power to act as the Roon Core. This could be a Nucleus, an Intel NUC (in a fanless case), an Audiostore server, an Innuos server, a mac mini or another computer.
So many choices, so many. Which ever server option you go for, the DCS Network Bridge is a seriously good piece of kit. It’s not cheap but it is good.
I went for a far less expensive Roon end point (the opticalRendu) and put the money into an M Scaler instead, as this made a hugely beneficial difference to our ears. We decided to put the available funds into the dac, knowing that we can always tweak Roon Cores, End Points, switches & cables (or fibres) later.
I’d keep the Roon Core and endpoint’s separated. That’s Roons recommendation and i’ve found the same in practice with my Nucleus and various USB DACs.
I’m surprised you found no difference fronting your system with the Qutest (and i recall you mention elsewhere you found the same with the NDX2). If this is the case, and you’re happy with the system as is then it may be worth leaving things as they are. If you are still thinking of changing then i would suggest as others have, having a good long home demo of some of the options. If you still find no improvement then just enjoy what you have.
As a general question to those who have kindly given some great advice. Should the Roon Core be in a separate unit (NAS, NUC, Nucleus etc…) from my stored music files.
At the moment the Roon Core is on my 2011 iMac, that has an i5 with 8gb RAM.
My stored music is on the iMac, and also on my cheap, eight year old Qnap 112 NAS.
Hi DJM,
I suspect that it is fine for the music to be stored on an SSD in the Roon Core box. Our music is stored this way.
The exact same rips are also stored separately on a Synology DS716+ NAS drive with WD Red Pro disc drives. At one point we compared the 2 versions (in Core SSD versus separate NAS) and consistently preferred the version stored on the SSD. This may be something to do with the impact of the home network for the NAS drive, the extra NAS drive latency or something else. Whatever the cause, the SSD version sounded more alive and engaging to us.
Yes no problem doing that. I wanted to neaten things up, so ended up buying another SSD drive (there is one in the Nucleus already tp store the OS and database) to store music files on so it’s all now in one box. It sits alongside a Cisco 2960 and serves a couple of end points elsewhere in the house.
Roon recommend local music storage for the core over using a NAS but you can do either. I used to use NAS now I have a local SSD USB drive attached to my Roon core machine. I noticed no increase in SQ but it makes for a more snappier UI and updates to your library happen instantly where with a Nas or may take until a full library rescan for them to show up as Nas are not reliable at giving out flle changes.
The next stage is a home demo. Not sure if the dealers will ship for a home demo…for free. Both my dealers are about a 180 mile round trip.
I’m warming towards…
A new powerful NAS with SSD storage, or Roon Nucleus with SSD storage.
A dCS Bridge, a Mytek Liberty DAC with a Power & Precision ECO MKII linear audio upgrade power supply, or similar.
But that will make fancy ethernet cables redundant because any RF picked up upstream won’t get through… Next there’ll be audiophile optical cables, designed to stop pickup of RF photons
If you’re considering Mytek then i’d recommend demoing the Brooklyn Bridge which has a built in network card and can function as a Roon endpoint (supports MQA too if that’s your thing). I demo’ed one a few months back along with the Chord TT2 / DAVE for my headphone system and ended up going the Mytek route. Lee @ Strictly Stereo will send you one for home demo it if you’re not local to him (he’s in Cheshire). Great chap to deal with.
Oops, sorry about that IB.
On the other hand, I’m quite taken with the idea of photon torpedoes.
They were great on Star Trek, so imaging how good they could be in a streaming network!
We tried Melco to DCS Network Bridge to DAVE and also Innuos Statement via Nucleus+ to DCS Network Bridge to DAVE and couldn’t quite warm to either. In both cases, the dealers had thrown thousands of pounds of posh cables between the Network Bridge, DAVE and the Naim NAC. It’s hard to put into words why but music just sounded a bit grainy or granular and artificial. Songs had great analytical resolution but didn’t sound natural and flowing.
The M Scaler fixed all that to a quite startling degree for us. It was one of those, “oh my goodness” moments (I paraphrase) when we first heard what the M Scaler does for DAVE. It was so obviously much better to us. Having said that, a number of people hear little if any difference when trying the M Scaler, so each to their own.
I know that you derive great satisfaction from your DAVE and haven’t found the need to try an M Scaler. Tony M was in a similar position for quite a while too. It’s a happy place to be.
Some people really rave about the Lumin A1. I think it’s about $10,000. Someone I know who left Naim said that this is now his fav, and he thinks it’s a better value. I’ve not heard it. The Lumin is Roon-ready.
