If you log into your NAS and pull up the widget that shows the network use, then queue up some music, you’ll see just how much bandwidth Room hauls on to fill the buffer and start playing.
WiFi is getting better all the time, but you can’t
beat a cable. That’s why Roon still advocates a hardwired core.
It may not have been clear in my response, but the NAS is and has been hardwired to the satellite, via dual bonded gigabit ethernet connections, and registers a 2 Gbps connection. The only WiFi link is between the satellite and the main router. Due to physical limitations, I’m only able to plug the NAS into the satellite, and a use a wireless backhaul to the main router. Running a cable between the NAS and the main router is simply not possible. Roon uses far less bandwidth than I’ve been able to achieve otherwise - prior to bonding the two connections, I was able to saturate one of the gigabit ethernet connections through the satellite for a few hours when initially transferred over several TBs of data. Additionally, I was able to stream to the same devices with either Apple Music via AirPlay, and loading up the library over SMB, or via the Sonos app, with no problem - it was only Roon that encountered issues. My personal suspicion is that it might have been detecting data timing issues that have been alleviated by moving from tri-band to quad-band, so that there are now two dedicated simultaneous bands for wireless backhaul.
I did pick that up in your initial post The key connection for Roon is the one between the core and your network/internet connection. That’s the one that is always recommended to be hard wired.
Even though you were hard-wired to the satellite, the connection back to your network was over WiFi and you’ve found how challenging Roon is to that connection.
Correct. This is a very important difference between our two configurations.
Also, doing a little research, and I could definitely be wrong, it appears that Orbi systems aren’t designed for 802.3ad for network clients; the feature is there to support WAN link aggregation, so it might be good to try just a single link. That said, the upstream WiFi will always be a problem even in this configuration.
(Note: because of this, I made some modifications to my original post, to help people better understand 802.3ad as well as the fact that I don’t consider it a requirement; I am just being transparent about my configuration. Thank you for spurring on improvements to my original post; I hope the forum system continues to allow me to improve it!)
A question for @Miles_Bainbridge - on what form of storage is your Roon database?
Thanks a lot for the nice primer 
When I started investigating and testing with roon, I always thought I would use roon only when it runs properly on my Synology NAS. All my music and other media files are already located on the NAS, and I simply don’t like the idea to care about any additional device/computer to just run the roon Core server. The less hardware you run the less problems you get 
. I also once started with DS Audio, but I always thought it could be so much better. I never had any issues with roon on my DS3617xs, all updates went through nicely.
Where I definitely had issues with is ROCK on NUC as a roon endpoint, when playing DSF (multichannel) music. Many asked roon how to solve this. AFAIK, no answers from them, yet. And roon seems to lie low when it comes to specific ROCK/NUC compatibility issues.
In the end, I got a very nice roon environment 
Hear, Hear! 
Thank You for the detailed post. I have many similarities and some divergences, and curious of a few items.
My setup (not detailed)
Observations:
Question: (I thought I would have a lot as I read this, but WOW you covered it all)
Can you clarify what you mean by “remote screen” in this context?
In regard to four of your points:
This prompted me to include some new details in my original post. A force rescan takes only 8 seconds to perform once Roon has done its initial 32-second scan after a core reboot. I don’t know how long a complete rescan takes for people whose core is separate from their NAS, but I don’t believe it’s this quick. Also, as I have tried to explain, the Synology CPU is fast enough for every use I have ever thrown at it. People get too caught up in processor power testosterone wars sometimes.
Good point. I do think that you could perform a fresh backup, rebuild your NAS disk pool with SHR 2, and copy it back over as a one-time sacrifice moving foward.
Presuming you are talking about the RoPieee screen, I do, and I have had no problems You do have to ensure that the web interface is use to properly configure the zone you wish to display on the screen. Not sure if that is your issue.
Because the while DA2 module (which I upgraded to) is great, I like the configurability of the RME ADI-2 DAC in regard to filters. I listen to it using the AKM SD Low Dispersion filter, which is a great fit for the rest of my kit. I guess I like having more one DAC at hand to choose from, depending upon my preferences. I also really love the RME’s display (esp. the frequency spectrum analyzer) and its bit-perfect test. Some people have multiple turntables…I have multiple DACs 
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Remote display is the term Roon uses. It will display lyrics and album art of the song playing.
Thank You
The display I am referring to is the remote one. I have a PC that could display the HTML remote display of what is playing and could not get that to work with the NAS but did work with the Mac, but I was poking at everything to figure out if Roon was worth the money for me.
I looked up the DAC RME ADI-2 DAC very cool.
Thank You !
WRT the NAS CPU Thank You.
I have about 15 docker containers running on the NAS and it works great for this.
With my 10GE network to the NAS I do not think, for me, there will be an advantage to move back to the NAS, but nice to have the option.
Yes this probably works quite well.
I just tried and it works fine for me. You do have to not only go to the URL specified, but you have to go back to the volume control icon in the zone you want to display, click on the display link, then enable Roon to send data to that display. If you don’t do that, all you see on the display is “Roon.” It’s something I don’t use often and it always takes a minute for me to figure it out, because it requires some gyrations.
Thank You - that is exactly what I could not make work. Problem on my side.
I was once asked about why I wouldn’t want a Nucleus.
My Roon core runs on a Synology RS3617xs, which I bought back in 2017 when I was a working photographer - I wanted something capable of shifting lots of big files around very quickly. When you get home at 2 am, and need to copy files from multiple 32 GB cards quickly and then back them up off site before going to bed, it fit the bill nicely.
12 x 4TB HDDs in RAID 10 (~20 real terabytes of storage with ~ 600 MB/s read and write speed), an old but decent Xeon CPU and 32GB of RAM. It’s also kitted out with an Intel server card with dual 10 Gb SR fibre modules configured as a 20 Gbit 802.3ad LACP bond over 40 metres of armoured OM3 back to the main switch in the house (Dell X1052P). It also runs a Plex server and hosts a dozen Quad-HD IP cameras under Surveillance Station.
When I initially got into Roon, I ran everything on the HDDs, though everyone told me I should run the DB on a SSD, so initially I ran the DB on a USB external SSD.
I had some issues with it - primarily going to sleep when I didn’t want it to, despite all of the settings apparently to the contrary.
I needed to reorganise the office/man cave, so I bought a reasonably priced server cabinet and a Silverstone PC rack case to rehouse my desktop PC and free up the space it was taking up on the floor. I also took the plunge and added an RX1217 expansion bay to the Rackststion. In this I fitted a bunch of SSDs to run the Roon DB and music library. The DB’s volume backs up to the main volume on the RS, the SSD music library also backs up to the main volume on the RS via A WebDAV/Cloudsync schedule, the DB also backs up to Dropbox and the music library and everything else of importance is Cloudsynced from the main array off-site via Backblaze B2.
The RX also holds a hot spare HDD for the main array on the RS and I also keep a couple of spare drives on the shelf.
After the RS3617’s PSU let out its magic smoke the other week and being offline for 4 days while I waited on delivery of a replacement, I now keep a spare PSU for each unit on the shelf. Somewhat annoyingly, they use different PSUs - essentially the same core unit, but different cable looms…
The RS3617xs performs superbly with Roon, despite doing everything else it does. Any additions to the music library are instantly available in Roon, no forced rescans required. I use a fair amount of DSP - 2 paths with 50 thousand taps for the REW and Rephase adjustments to the main listening room system (RPi endpoint running RoPieee). There are also 2 further RPi endpoints and a bunch of Sonos speakers dotted around the house.
CPU load % is normally in single figures and RAM use is minimal:
I wouldn’t advocate going out and buying a Rackstation to run Roon, but since I already had mine, using it as my core was a no-brainer.
Yes, there’s a fair chunk of hard-earned tied up in it, but some people pay considerably more for an “audiophile” streamer and then add optical fibre via media converters and all sorts of other paraphernalia.
A pre-terminated 40 m length of armoured 8-core OM3 was only a few hundred pounds. It connects the Rackststion to the house, my desktop PC via 10Gbit fibre and the office network switch which supports the office wireless access point, printer, energy monitoring hardware and a bunch of other devices.
Why would I want a Nucleus?
@Graeme_Finlayson Thank you for your thoughtful response! You have a tremendous setup, and a great example of how this can be a high-end experience if one so chooses.
I never really have bothered checking CPU usage before during listening, but I just did for a while, and it ranges from 0-3% on my 1522+, depending on what I am doing and what endpoint(s) I am listening to. I went back and added this detail to my original post (its 16th edit!).
I think about my Roon setup and that it costs some money, but this isn’t a cheap hobby, and what I spend on my NAS and network is a fraction of what I’ve spent on the rest of my system. It’s worth every penny to me.
I run two other NASs for other purposes: one for general documents/working files, and the other for photos and videos. All of this is worth every penny, too 
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@DDPS About your audio chain: Did you ever think about or even tried downgrading the Synology OS to version 6 so that you can use the integrated USB audio support w/o the Roopie in the middle? I did that and the only inconvenience is that you have to place the ADI-DAC near the NAS? Any advice or suggestion? Greetings, Franz-Josef
@Franz-Josef_Knelange I would not be interested in doing that. For one thing, there is nothing at all wrong with RoPieee being in the middle whatsoever. Beyond that, there are major security and performance enhancements in DSM 7 vs 6; finally, my NAS model wouldn’t even support it!
This is all super interesting. Thanks for the ideas. I’m about to upgrade my 8 year old Synology NAS and am debating using a NAS or going with an inexpensive ZFS based linux box and just running Roon Core on that. Could drastically simplify the whole house playback infra and leave me with better options. But, there’s something neat about this solution that I like.
