To Roon or not to Roon.....?

This is one of the big reasons why I Roon. Music anywhere in the house that incorporates serious listening zones as well as others that are not all from so many different devices, I can seamlessly switch rooms, devices, carry the playlist with me and run groups of them together and run Tidal or Qobuz on all of them at the same time. This lst does not include all the private endpoints you can have from the remote apps themselves on tablet of phones to which would add 5 more zones for portable listening around the house or outside in the garden. This alone for me was worth the price of entry.

Hi Chris,
Audiostore Prestige 3 server as Roon Core, ethernet to Cisco 2960G switch, cheapo Amazon ethernet Cat6 cable to streamer acting as Roon end point.

I donā€™t have anything by Melco. The Melco server was only at the Naim dealer for the big comparison of Naim vs Chord vs DCS.

Best regards, BF

Hi, do you think I should hang another nas because on the cheap wd my cloud Iā€™m also doing my work pc saves?

I think we need to be clearer about the options here. In my opinion, if you want a decent Roon solution then you need to look at a separate Core vehicle be that a ROCK compliant NUC or, if you have money to burn, a Nucleus/Nucleus+.

With respect to those who use them other solutions involve compromises I would not accept. I ran Roon through my IMac for a time and there were clear issues for me with multitasking. I definitely would not run it through a NAS.

I run Roon through a fanless NUC specified to Nucleus+ level with a 2TB SSD installed which holds all my ripped and downloaded music. Since given the streaming and library services that Roon gives me, I certainly wonā€™t rip a CD again and if I download hires then I can save it to the SSD as required.

To my hearing there is no difference between RAAT and UPNP and that is through a dual ND555DR power supply to ND555.

You may have guessed that I am Roon convert!

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What kind of problems with multitasking you had? I run Roon server on my PC which I use for many other things also like gaming and movies. Only time when I might have problems with Roon playback is when thereā€™s some other heavy HDD usage simultaneously on the storage HDD. And this means extremely heavy usage like Steam updating a game in background etc. If I want to do serious listening, I close every possible background task and dedicate the PC for Roon. I also use Fidelizer to help with this. For me, it would be complete waste of money to buy another computer just to run Roon server, which is very light task for modern PC if you donā€™t use all the DSP functions.

Which NAS synology model is recommended for running roon too?

Sorry, I was confusing your post with those from DB with his unsatisfactory trials of Roon with a Melco. Must have been the large brown animals that confused me!

Perfectly understandable Chris!

I have been enjoying Roon immensely through a loan Moon streamer for much of today.

Music ripped to flac on the Prestige server with its 2TB SSD sounds a bit cleaner and tauter than the same tracks pulled off the Synology DS716+ NAS drive (with WD Red+ hard drives) - these were ripped from the same cd using XLD and the AIFF codec.

So I have then compared playing the same tracks using Roon vs. Moonā€™s Mind 2 software. Same preference of flac on SSD server over AIFF on the remote Synology NAS drive using the Moon Mind app. However, music sounds tauter, clearer and more natural using the Moon app than using Roon. Itā€™s not a massive improvement but a consistent, small and worthwhile one.

So Moon Mind trumps Roon (with DSP engine disabled) on every track from both sources when using a Moon streamer.

A fascinating journey.

Best regards, BF

Depends what sort of system you have I guess (and I donā€™t mean to be arrogant in this) but if you have invested in a top of the range Naim streaming system then worrying about spending cĀ£1k on a standalone Roon solution makes no sense. Using a multi use computer for the Core has got to have compromises, Iā€™m not saying itā€™s wrong or it wonā€™t work just that itā€™s not ideal and NAS is even less than ideal.

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Now that you are using it, do bear in mind that the DSP functions need not negatively impact SQā€¦ but remember less is more. Used wisely your overall SQ experience can be increased.
Remember also many talk about SQ this or that, but they are often hearing the effects of related process rather Roon or UPnP itself. Underneath the covers the Roon RAAT and UPnP media transfer are the sameā€¦ your are just as likely to hear SQ differences between different UPnP NAS or media serversā€¦ I have written about this many tines.
With Naim however, do remember to override the Naim resolution setting in Roon to 24 bits as opposed to 32 bitsā€¦ that can make quite a difference. Let Roon do the decimation rather than the Naim streamer.

Actually after ten years of Naim, I recently moved to Linn ADSM with active ATCā€™s. Certainly not a cheap system, very revealing and capable. It mostly comes down to if I even believe there can be audible difference when comparing different storage systems or servers. I certainly canā€™t hear any difference in SQ if I stress my PC while listening to music vs if I completely dedicate it for Roon server. I guess by ā€compromisedā€ you mean that dedicated server is somehow clearly superior in sound quality? But thatā€™s another conversation.

Please, I wasnā€™t suggesting your system was cheap.

I really donā€™t want to get into a pointless argument over this but how do you completely dedicate your PC as a Roon server? Do you know what it is doing in the background?

I think most of us accept that a separate switch for our music systems is the way to go, so why not a separate vehicle for the Roon core?

Because they are completely unrelatedā€¦ and I am not sure anyone is advocating a seperate switch for audio systemsā€¦ I certainly am not, and I was the one who introduced the Cisco 2960 to the forum a few years ago after trial and error hunting down an RFI issue with a Netgear unmanaged switch.

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I own a Linn Limax, and I have been playing around with Roon. I think it is best for me is to play Roon lossless without messing around with DSP.

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Yeah no problem.

I dedicate the PC as best as I can. Of course thereā€™s always some background tasks running, Windows wouldnā€™t run otherwise, but you can minimize the number. And I can monitor every single process and resources they use simply by opening task manager. Or process explorer which diggs little deeper.

I have never tried to add separate switch in my system. I use D-Link DIR868, a capable wifi-router, which has no problems streaming music to the ADSM. It interests me to try a separate switch though but I canā€™t really see how it would affect the sound quality in my system.

try Patu, you can return if not satisfied.

With respect, I seem to have lost the plot here, what are you advocating a Cisco switch for then?

It was for resultant SQ from the reduced switch serial physical clock jitter compared to certain other switches that were quite popular at the timeā€¦ wrote loads about this on the other forum.

A switch has seperate collision domains on each port so you donā€™t need to seperate things out.

Camlan, when you say ā€˜I would not run it through a NASā€™, what do you mean?
Iā€™m running Roon Core on a Qnap, and it is very straightforward and reliable, so I canā€™t see why not to run it this way.
David

I started out with RoonROCK, went to a s/h Melco.

Last week I installed the Uniti Core and a Cisco switch + a small RasPi for Qobuz. Not so exotic perhaps but it does sound very good.