I’m a little confused when you say you don’t want to buy a third server, and then also suggest one possibility is to get a Sonic Transporter or a Nucleus(+). Those qualify as “another server” to me.
The ST is (probably – I’ve not personally used one, but have no reason to believe it shouldn’t be) a nice turn-key solution that gets you both Roon and HQPlayer (though personally I see little point in HQPlayer, since you can do much of the same upsampling in Roon’s own DSP engine). The Nucleus(+) is also a turnkey solution, albeit without HQPlayer on the box. As an old Unix admin, I went with my own server, put CentOS 7 minimal on it, and then installed the Linux Roon Server on it. That allows me full access to the system to manage it how I prefer. If you get a system (even a NUC) and install the OS yourself instead of using say, ROCK, then you can easily put Roon and HQPlayer on the same server. You just have to manage it yourself.
You mention a Rendu and then DAC. But you’ve also mentioned the Vega G2 in every post. The Vega G2 is a Roon Ready endpoint already; it has a network port. You don’t need a network streamer like the Rendu if you go with the Vega G2. Other DACs, like the Chords, do not have network streaming built in, and would require something like the Rendu or the Aries you’ve also mentioned a few times in this thread. You need to settle on what DAC you want, and then figure out how what that specific DAC requires to get it connected to the network.
Remotely similar, but certainly not even close being the same… Of course depending if you consider all upsampling being the same regardless of algorithm used.
Note that CentOS 7 is not supported as platform for running HQPlayer though. So if one wants to run HQPlayer, it would be good to use one of the officially supported distros.
HQPlayer Embedded has one extra option as supported platform compared to HQPlayer Desktop.
Yes, obviously, use an OS flavor that is supported. As I don’t use HQPlayer, I am not familiar with its supported OS versions. I would hope someone that does use it would consult your docs for what is supported. My example of CentOS 7 was just me stating what I used for my Roon Core.
And yes, different algos will generate different results. And some may find one more pleasing than another. But in the grand scheme of things, I think the differences are pretty small for a lot of users. I think room correction would be a much bigger win, and I have the impression your product does a better job of that than Roon’s DSP, simply from maturity.
You know you can install the Roon Core on the QNAP, right?
Your QNAP is sufficient for a reasonably big library (100K+ tracks) and limited upsampling tasks. And if you feel the urge to use HQ Player, I’m sure your i5 MacMini can do good results when used only as HQPlayer.
Roon Core will never be made available on the Aries G1/G2 platform though, not powerful enough.
@cwichura Yeah, please don’t be confused. It’s only my ignorance. When I write „server”, I mean something bigger, with 2-4 discs like Qnap, Synology, LaCie …
Thanks for the advice with CentOs7 minimal.
@jussi_laako For my ears, HQ Player was a big step and upgrade to Roon and the only replacement for it could be in my opinion a separate upscaler like Chord’s MScaler or Auralic’s Sirius or something like this.
@Mikael_Ollars The idea of running Roon on Qnap TS-453BT3 with CentOS7 and HQPlayer4 on MacMini is quite nice. I think seriously about it. My problem is, that my MacMini i5 2,6 GHz from late 2014 with 16GB RAM 1600 GHz DDR3 and 512GB SSD was chocking up on Roon and HQPlayer running simultanously.
I can tell you my MSB The Analog Dac works perfectly with either QuadUSB or my more recent NetworkRenderer V2. @thyname just got the Discrete Dac and has feedback.
I’ll also just say that the MSB Dac does an amazing job in the D>A realm. I haven’t found any kind of upsampling beneficial. So HQPlayer might not be needed.
Of course depending if you consider all upsampling being the same regardless of algorithm used.
As I don’t use HQPlayer, I am not familiar with its supported OS versions. I would hope someone that does use it would consult your docs for what is supported. My example of CentOS 7 was just me stating what I used for my Roon Core.