roon core options

[rbbert]

What did you just said? [emoji15][emoji15]
That almost sounds illegal.
I think your dog just used your computer. Yes, right? [emoji2960][emoji2958]

Owning an OOP album is illegal? Owning live recordings or radio broadcast recordings is illegal? Not in the USA, and in some European countries you can legally sell older recordings that were never officially released (supposedly the impetus behind Bob Dylan’s Bootleg series)

 

[Howiebrou]

My roon core is on my relatively new HP i7 desktop. unfortunately the desktop is on wifi even though the files are on an external hard disk until i work out what server / computer to use long term for roon core. with an internet speed of 6Mbps it's not the best connection...

 

[rbbert]

Exactly, I get music to listen to it, not simply collecting it. So if someone has 20 TB of music they would have to listen 24 hours a day and it would still take 3-4 years to listen to all only once.

I have hard enough time picking what to listen to with 1000 albums .

Listening about 2500 hrs/yr (a bit less than 7 hours/day). Assuming an average 24/48, that's about 2 TB/yr. 20 TB seems about right to me.

 

[Randy Myers]

So basically a bit more than CD quality. I was figuring in some higher resolution files .... still that is 10 years of files without ever repeating a song, ever ... As you said we are all different.

A buddy has a huge NAS hidden somewhere in his house, because it is so loud. He likes to think he is the storage center of all files for the club. I rip all of his SACDs for him, but honestly, don't think I have ever listen to a single one of them. Not the music I enjoy.

I definitely buy the music I enjoy and that seems to get 99.9% of my playing time. Again we all enjoy our music in our own ways.

I still say that a vast majority of digital music listeners can "get by" with 2-4 TB of internal storage space ....

 

[Kuoppis]

Trying to get an i7 NAS is going to be quite expensive. For the purpose of Roon Core, i7 NUC represents a much better value.

Many low price NAS run Celeron (quad core or not), which is below Roon official minimum requirements.

Suitability for use as a music server is not a question of an Intel product line, but about the MIPS the CPUs are able to perform. The i7 has a lots of graphics processing and other functional properties which are not used, and also of no use, when transferring files from a NAS to a DAC.

In turn, multicore processors can share the load between several cores when processing files, which is a relevant feature for a NAS.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Bones13]

I have a fanless i5 NUC that I ran Win10 for Roon Core, with music on a NAS. I did some tinkering with Win10, and it sounded pretty good. I tried a Roon Core on my i3 NAS, and that sounded as good, so I took the extra computer out of the mix.

I’m doing some re-arrangement of the Audio boxes this weekend, and plan to try loading the ROCK, light Linux based, Roon Core on my NUC, and try it, with a USB drive for music storage.

i don’t use room correction, but do resample all my music to DSD128 in order to use the DSD specific DAC in the Bricasti.

i got one of these before it was gone:

https://www.quietpc.com/sys-ultranuc-pro-6-fanless

Its a few years old, but should be fine for ROCK.

 

[MPW]

I built a Roon core last week using an Intel NUC8i7BEH with 8GB RAM and a 128GB M.2 SSD. What a huge pain in the ass the build was! I figured this would take an hour or so to complete as I am fairly computer literate. I was way off. I’ll bet this took me 6 hours over 3 days. I used the instructions that Roon has on their website, but each step required multiple attempts and google searches to achieve success. One of the issues that caused slowness is that I used my Samsung TV as the monitor because I no longer own an actual computer monitor. Every time there was a reboot or disconnect, the TV input had to be reset. It made the install much more difficult than it needed to be. However, I kept my patience, and the result is a Roon core that works perfectly. I now understand the value of plug and play solutions like Roon Nucleus!

 

[aKnyght]

I built a Roon core last week using an Intel NUC8i7BEH with 8GB RAM and a 128GB M.2 SSD. What a huge pain in the ass the build was! I figured this would take an hour or so to complete as I am fairly computer literate. I was way off. I’ll bet this took me 6 hours over 3 days. I used the instructions that Roon has on their website, but each step required multiple attempts and google searches to achieve success. One of the issues that caused slowness is that I used my Samsung TV as the monitor because I no longer own an actual computer monitor. Every time there was a reboot or disconnect, the TV input had to be reset. It made the install much more difficult than it needed to be. However, I kept my patience, and the result is a Roon core that works perfectly. I now understand the value of plug and play solutions like Roon Nucleus!

ouch!!! i must have gotten really lucky as once i built the roon core server it only took an hour or two to update the bios, configure the machine, install ROCK and then configure it as the roon core -- also using a tv connected via hdmi as the monitor.

look on the bright side: you have 100% equivalent functionality of a nucleus+ but did not have to shell out the outrageous msrp of $2,500 ...more dough for other gear!!

 

[MPW]

ouch!!! i must have gotten really lucky as once i built the roon core server it only took an hour or two to update the bios, configure the machine, install ROCK and then configure it as the roon core.

look on the bright side: you have 100% equivalent functionality of the nucleus+ but did not have to shell out the $2,500 ...more dough for other gear!!

Exactly! I have this in a utility room so I don’t need the fanless case. I think I am going to experiment with the DSP functionality which is why I went with the higher processing power.

 

[1kw]

I have been using a 2012 Mac mini with 16 gb of ram running flawlessly without any issues. The amount of computing power needed even on this older dual core i5 processor has never come close to maxing out the machine as I have the activity monitor on in the upper left hand corner of the monitor . I have also run Roon on my new MacBook Pro i9 processor and could not notice any differences in performance.

 

[rrwmd]

It's stories like Morgan's that have usually made me shy away from DIY stuff. I just don't have the time or patience.

So here's what I ended up doing:

I talked to Andrew Gillis, CEO and owner of Small Green computer. I was all prepared to go with their sonicTransporter i9 (that just recently replaced the i7 model) thinking I would need this much processing power. After telling him about my setup he actually said I really didn't need that and recommended the basic sonicTransporter i5 and said that if I experienced any hiccups and wasn't satisfied I could return it. So I bought the i5 model about a month ago.

So far, even running multiple roon endpoints/zones as well as occasional upsampling and Eq, I haven't been able to trip it it up. (I would imagine the basic roon Nucleus would also work just fine, although MSRP is $500 more). Pretty nice when a salesperson talks you into spending less money!

 

[Randy Myers]

Processing power needed really depends on the software you are running. I would not need the power I have if I was simply running Roon Core on the machine. However running HQPlayer requires a ton of power, and from my tests, CPU power. All eight cores are in full play with HQPlayer.

Also, I believe the performance is vastly better when storing files internally inside the machine. Now a days good storage is cheap. It does not cost a fraction of what dedicated server builders charge. 1 TB M.2, latest fastest drive, cost, if I recall correctly, about $200 (just checked, Samsung 970 EVO drives, 1 TB are under $170). And there is zero external transport of the signal. The M.2 drives plug directly into the motherboard, similar to how RAM connects.

For me, with all my files internal on M.2 (2 TB for DSF files) and 2.5" SSDs (1 TB for PCM files) I have 3 TB. With about 950 albums, mostly high res and a ton of DSD (128, 256, and 512) I have plenty of storage still available. If I were only doing CD rips there would be room for 4-5 thousand albums. Not going through the network to play files is a huge performance advantage.

I had Falcon build the basic unit because of their far superior cases, and access to higher grade parts. Their construction quality is second to none, and they built exactly as I requested including pre-wiring for my extra SSD drives. It took me maybe an hour to add the extra drives in. Copying music to the server was the real time sync .

 

[brad225]

I too purchased the i5 last year. It worked great with Roon and Qobuz. I was unable to upsample to DSDx4 with the i5 so a chose to upgrade to the i9 with Roon and HQplayer embedded.

I had to wait a couple of months for the i9 to be available but it was worth the wait. I'm using it feeding a UltraRendu then to my DAC. When I first tried DSDx4 I felt it closed in the image and stage and went back to DSDx2 for a while. I decided to make a more serious attempt see what it would do. I discovered that what I thought was a closed image was more detail and a more refined sound. I have made some acoustical changes to my room and the sound at DSDx4 is wonderful.

I have not yet set up HQplayer as I am waiting to become use to the sound of Roon filters for upsampling.

I am very happy with Andrew's products and his help with any issues I had.

 

[Bones13]

I installed Rock on my i5 with only one issue. I was trying to update the missing codecs, and kept trying the method listed in directions to get to the “data” directory through the Rock webpage. I finally found the data directory showed up in the network portion of the file manager. Directly copied the ffmpg file, and everything worked fine.

I resample to DSD128, what’s that x2 DSD, with no issues. i5 with 16g memory, and 128g SSD.

 

[wklie]

I was unable to upsample to DSDx4 with the i5

You need to enable Parallelize Sigma Delta Modulator.