It is a NUC11TNHi7 (a NUC11PAHi7 would give pretty near identical performance) bought as a bare system (no RAM, no SSD/HDD). This is the latest NUC for which ROCK currently supports HDMI audio connections to, for example, an AVR. Such a connection is not supported on the 12th generation NUCs (and is known not to work on 13th generation NUCs - which are not officially supported by ROCK anyway). The ROCK support of HDMI on these later NUCs may change in the future because it is possible that one or other of the newly announced Nucleus devices (One or Titan) will require it.
The two RAM DIMMS are used to get the best memory performance. With two RAM DIMMs both memory channels of the processor are used so you get twice the sustained memory performance of a single DIMM configuration (although you won’t get twice the memory performance overall because of the impact of memory caching in the processor).
The 1TB 970 QVO drive is for media storage - you may or may not want this - you could just use a share on your NAS instead. If you do opt for local storage for your NUC based Roon Server, you could use a 2.5inch SATA SSD/HDD or an external one connected by USB (formatted for exFAT). All of these options would have perfectly adequate performance. If you opt for SSD, you do not need to pay for high performance since serving music does not need high transfer rates and, since it will be mostly ‘write once’, you do not need to pay for an SSD that provides for lots of writing before it fails.
Be aware that you cannot backup your Roon database to an internal disk but you can back it up to a USB connected disk. On the other hand, you could also back it up to your NAS.
I opted for the internal SSD for:
Tidyness - my Roon Server in my Lounge Equipement stand.
Quietness - my Roon Server in my Lounge Equipement stand.
You can see the list of NUCs currently supported by ROCK at:
Both of the NUC’s that I mentioned above are on the list.
How many of the 5 bays are you using for your RAID/music storage?
If you could put together a similar configuration to what I noted in my OP, (4 spinning discs with the 5th bay as its own storage pool employing a high quality SSD) you might see a performance jump.
USB SSD storage is a teeny bit slower than eSATA SSD storage, but there is still a difference…and having a good quality SSD in that 5th slot may make a meaningful difference. No matter where you connect your SSD, make sure it has good performance, as there are many cheap SSDs that aren’t much better than spinning discs.
FYI I now have just under 50,000 tracks in the configuration in my OP, and it is quick and smooth as butter.
@DDPS , can you point me to your original post? It looks like I’m in luck because I have the fifth bay completely empty. This sounds like it would be a very affordable upgrade solution.
I currently have 1.13 TB of music so 2 TB drive should last me for a while. Would you recommend the Samsung 960 in that case?
Your DS1019+ happens to be equipped with a particularly slow CPU in terms of single core performance. Sluggish roon experience is to be expected with that one. An alternative to adding a NUC would be simply exchanging the Synology to a faster one, CPU-wise. DS1522+ or DS923+ would be my recommendations offering the fastest CPU in a consumer NAS. I am not very familiar with Synology, but it should be possible to migrate everything by simply transferring the drives in the bay to a new NAS.
FWIW, prior to my 1522+, I was using a 918+ with a collection of about 40K files, and while I the 1522+ is markedly snappier, I would not say that the 918+ (which is the 4-bay version of the 1019+) was sluggish. But I had a great configuration with the SanDisk SSD in an eSATA external enclosure.
With a small and easy-to-handle library it might work with this Celeron J3455, but the moment you put it under stress, it gets sluggish according to my experience.
Just added a Samsung 960 2TB in my fifth slot for my music library. Roon is noticeably more responsive than before. Thank you for the great suggestion, @DDPS !
Glad to hear that. As I mentioned in my OP, raw processing power is overblown in audio processing. Many other things have a more profound impact on performance.
Great read thru this whole thread - I really appreciate everyone’s input.
I’m new to Roon and have all my music on a Synology DS1821+. From everything I’m reading it sounds like it will be an excellent Roon server. I’m about to click “install”…
I look at the install file: RoonServer_Synology_DSM7_x86-64_20220216.spk
Does that mean it is a version from 2/16/2022? I know there have been many updates to Roon since then - will this get those updates?
I think (been a while since I’ve ran the installer) it only shows you whatever you’ve defined as a Share. Specify it at install, and once it pulls in the actual Roon server and launches it, you can go to Roon settings and configure a specific folder (within that share) that you want Roon to watch.
I ended up picking a different, empty top-level folder for the music directory. After it installed, I installed the app on my phone and I was able to set the exact folder I wanted.
I’ve been a Roon ROCK user for years. I have had a long-standing issue where I get regular dropouts when using Roon ARC (but not the Roon core when at home) on my Chord Poly. Most commentators advise it’s my network or connectivity. My network is not elaborate and I live in Washington DC with a pretty strong cell signal when I’m out and about. In an effort to get this closed out, I have written to Chord (who has been really helpful), had the Poly physically examined by the Sound Organisation, and swapped out nearly all my networking equipment (for this and other reasons) but yet, the dropouts continue.
However, I have not swapped out my NUC, and would like to try to have my Synology NAS serve as the core for a test to see if that might eliminate the dropouts. I followed this guidance which is pretty straightforward. I downloaded and installed the RoonServer and see it in my installed apps:
