Brand new to Roon-Hoping for a quick review of my setup before I start

Hi folks, I think Roon is amazing, so I am leaving JRiver behind and jumping in with both feet. I want to run the core on NAS. My current Qnap TS-251 is just about full of PC backups, videos, pictures, etc, so it’s time for a new NAS, and a good time to start on fresh hardware with Roon. I have been reading everything I can find to ensure I am doing this right, and hoping you experienced folks can review my intended setup to make sure I am starting right:

QNAP TVS-671 outfitted as follows:
-i3, 16G RAM, Bay 1-WD Blue 2.5" 250G SSD for the Roon DB, Bay 2/3-WD Red 6G drives in RAID1 mode, Bay 4-WD Red 6G drive for incremental backups. I have ~1TB of FLAC files that will also reside on these drives, of course.

My primary (and possibly only) output will be 3 DACs I have in my office(Marantz HD-DAC1, Oppo HA-1, and Oppo Sonica). Only one used at a given time. This setup will be for headphone listening, and maybe expanding later.

I am getting all the hardware this weekend, and initially I plan to attach to a given DAC via a Moon Audio Silver Dragon USB cable right off the QNAP NAS until I receive…

a SOTM SMS-200 I ordered yesterday(that comes with a heavily discounted 1 year Roon subscription !) in order to have a Roon Ready device front-ending my DAC units. Following Roon’s advice to network to the output device wherever possible.

I have been reading the info on Chris’s site regarding the steps to get core running on a QNAP NAS, and paying close attention to the volume naming, which I have learned from reading threads here, is critically important to get off on the right foot.

Would really appreciate any input from you veterans regarding my setup intentions above-anything you would change/add/modify?

thanks very much…

Have you thought about spending less on the NAS and putting money towards Roon Rock on a NUC instead?

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I really didn’t. I wanted to get a high performance NAS to take me several years into the future to handle the non-Roon things I will be continuing to use NAS for: PC backups/RAW picture files/4k videos, etc. I figured since a high performance NAS fits Roon specs why not run it there and have one less system to manage…

I would use the NAS for music storage and the other uses you have in mind but I would run Roon on a NUC using the free ROCK os.

I’d do it exactly as you were describing your setup. There are different views about this here. I share your view:
I want one strong server in my place, that can serve multiple purposes. If you go for a strong NAS, your media files are local to the core and can be utilised by other services (if required) easily. Also backup plans for your media files are quite easy to accomplish in this scenario. You are also reducing the network bandwidth as the core does not need to retrieve your media files over network.
ROCK/Nucleus setups have advantages, when it comes to boot time and custom kernelfeatures. On QNAP RoonServer has to live with the QNAP kernel, which means for example, that it might occur that specific audio devices or features like native DSD are not supported by the QNAP kernel. But there are also cheap and good solutions to circumvent these restrictions (Raspberry Pi/microRendu).

When you want to start doing things like DSD upsampling and other DSP related functions roon a NAS unless its a very good spec i3/5 or even i7 processor will not make the cut. its probably fine to start with but start to stretch the performance a bit and you will end up wanting or in fact needing a dedicated core for Roon. Music can reside in a NAS still even an old slow NAS is still workable for streaming music.

the Oppo’s and Marantz would probably need a Roon Bridge running on the likes of a RPi or other networked Roon endpoint.

hi Jeff,

Not sure if you can read Chinese or not. If you could, I have just finished a review of Roon Server running on Qnap NAS. https://issuu.com/windfollower/docs/qnap_nas_roon_server

Of course, if you have any problems, I think not only Chris but also I am willing to offer help. Good Luck.

John

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Thanks for the replies all, very much appreciated. Wizard, I have an SoTM SMS-200 on order, along with an Uptone Ultracap LPS 1.2 power supply, which is a supported Roon End Point that should handle several duties: network to the output device, improve the SQ, provide guaranteed attachment for my DACs, and clean up network “noise” related to the Cat6 connection. As you surmised, my DAC’s are not working directly attached to the QNAP (which I was going to use while waiting on the SMS-200 to arrive)

For now, I have Roon Remote running on my Macbook Pro and also on a Win7 PC build to allow me to check out Roon and get acquainted to the interface. If I do run into trouble down the road with the QNAP trying to do more intensive playback like DSD, I would certainly consider an alternate solution like those mentioned.

I must say I am blown away by Roon compared to the JRiver I have used for years. It’s like I’m hearing my FLAC files for the first time…amazing SQ, and the interface and feature set-well, that’s why they charge a subscription I suppose-it’s really impressive.

Thanks!

I have an overblown home network that is primarily used as a home data science lab. At the heart of my home data center is a pair of vmware virtual machine hosts. At any given time I’m probably running ten servers for various purposes. When I discovered Roon I created a virtual machine for the core. It was sufficiently powerful but I have some odd network problems to deal with. Than I played with an old Macbook Air as a core – and it worked pretty well. I have a few Synology NAS devices including one that houses my music, but I didn’t think they were sufficiently powerful. In the end I put together a NUC running ROCK. Ordering, assembly and deploying couldn’t have been easier. That little box is tucked away in a closet just doing it’s thing. While I am not inclined to add more hardware to my network when other boxes on hand can do the job I am beyond thrilled that I deviated from that approach here. There are times when a dedicated purpose built box is just what the doctor ordered. From my perspective, this is one of those time. Simplicity is a virtue. And the sucker just flat out works.

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I agree with this advice, as I have argued at length here.

Isn’t it fun… :smiley:

Too much fun!