The rest of your rather zealous anti-Apple points notwithstanding, I don’t follow this argument at all. I was in the situation to make that choice a while back, and I wanted to buy a NUC or similar hardware to run ROCK. I found that at that time — must be about 15 months ago, I think — the Mac was way cheaper. I found few suppliers of NUC-style hardware and they were located on the other side of the world with long delivery times and no chance of warranty fulfillment if needed. Since the machine I was hoping to replace at the time was an old Intel Mac and I had been quite unhappy with its performance, I didn’t initially consider getting another Mac… then I found all the positive news about native M1 support, and the Mac offering was in fact cheaper than any other I considered.
I’m running my M1 Mac Mini in a back room as a headless system since that time. Roon is very fast indeed, and the machine load rarely exceeds 10%. The M1 uses a ridiculously small amount of power — much less than any comparable Intel, a well-documented fact! — and so this is the perfect solution that I wasn’t even looking for.
I don’t have that large a library yet but it’s recommended with larger ones to use a desktop cpu especially if it’s still growing as you will reach the limits of a nuc. I ditched ROCK a few months back and use dietpi instead as it gives me more insight into seeing what Roons doing and what resources it’s hogging which is interesting to see how much of the cpu it gobbles up doing a simple search.
Best performance is with Mac Mini M1 or M2 chip. Maybe M3 will come soon
Delete all other apps and use Screens5 to control Mac mini … that is 100% (99%) Proof
Why does everyone make it so hard…Just use your post above and no issues! I use two MAC Minis’…I use a top spec 2012 Mac Mini for my Library only and have a M1 Mini for the balance of my Roon needs including using Custom DSP for my Main listening rooms Roon Correction needs…Gonna get a M2 or 3 to replace my 2012 Mini this year…
It plays the files from my 2012 Mini… I think mini’s are the best to use for ROON as you equip it based on your Library size and operate all of it with an iPad…works perfectly!!!
Roon server runs well on a lot of different computer devices. Use whatever you prefer. Just make sure it is powerful enough for your situation.
I run three Roon servers including Roon Nucleus with 16 GB ram, Apple Mac Mini (late 2014) 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 with 8 GB ram and upgraded Samsung 980 1TB M.2 SSD, and Dell XPS 15 with 32 GB ram. Roon server runs well on all three.
I’m not sure it’s “Bad Advice”…Just limited in it’s scope…If you used only Apple devices, properly equipped, you would not encounter any problems, I would say…
) Proof
