Hi @jussi_laako I’m looking for some advice.
I currently have the below installed on a Mac Mini M4.
Roon Core
HQ Player
This feeds my Denafrips Venus II Dac and Denafrips Iris 12th DDC
I was using my Mac Mini as dedicated HQ Player and had an Asus 13 Pro Nuc as dedicated Roon Core.
I have since removed the NUC as the M4 handles Roon and HQ Player perfectly (upsampling to DSD256)
Given the Redundant NUC would I see large benefit in setting this up as a NAA? Any feedback would be appreciated.
You could easily try it out by booting NAA OS on it. Biggest benefit is working around the DoP that is needed on macOS with direct connections. With NAA OS for example you can do native DSD without DoP as it bypasses CoreAudio completely. This opens up some more DSD rates, etc.
Sound quality wise I don’t think there is a big difference in your setup, although I’m not sure what kind of USB isolation (if any) the DDC has. If it doesn’t have isolation, then something like Intona isolator may be beneficial.
Thanks Jussi I will give that a try.
Also another quick question, I’m running HQ Player as Desktop on the Mac Mini would embedded be better? Thanks heaps.
HQPlayer Embedded is Linux-only, so it won’t work on macOS. So from that perspective the answer is pretty simple.