I admire Apple products for their designs and such. I have had considered running roon core on Mac mini, too. For one of the main reasons I picked roon is roon’s UI, just like you do, and the other main reason is roon’s DSP feature, which can be CPU intensive depending on the configuration combinations, e.g. to convert PCM to DSP at high rates. If you do not need DSP, at least from computational power POV is not a show stopper for going with used Mac mini with i3 or i5 configuration. Some also say slower CPUs would have lower EMI that have less influence to SQ. As I use the DSP feature, and quality used Mac mini with i7 is much less available locally, I have had invested in an i7 NUC with ROCK (which is free).
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Hi,
I am running Roon on a 2010 Mac mini to which so far I only expanded RAM memory up to 8GB. It’s been quite stable so far, some issues sometimes, but nothing big.
Next upgrade will be the HDD to become a SSD, now it is an external WD 1TB standard HDD.
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2014 macmini other than perhaps the 1.4ghz option one is quite ok for a roon core with a modest library and some upsampling too.
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I also run roon on the Mac mini 2.6 GHz 2014 that I’ve used as a media server for many years.
The nice thing about the 2014 models if that if it came with an apple SSD there is still room for a conventional drive in the case - so mine has an apple SSD for the OS, and 4TB SSD for media (and 16G of ram).
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I just replaced my mid-2011 mini with a refurbished 2018. Roon is much happier. Everything happens instantly, upsampling works well, and “file is loading slowly” errors have disappeared. You can run on older hardware, but the refurb 2018 was $650 with an Apple warranty.
Bonus - damn those usb c ports make for fast file transfers, and internet throughput is faster. 2011 would max out at 225mbps on a wired connection. 2018 delivers full 350mbps.
I’m using a 2012 Mac air book. 8 gig of ram and Ssd I have 120 gig of music files and use tidal to cover some of the gaps on my music. It’s work great for over six months with no problems
I would suggest a 2014 Mac Mini - unfortunately only the 2014 Mini or later is compatible with the new OS Big Sur that will be released shortly.
The nice thing about the 2014 Mac Mini is that you can get one with say a internal 256 SSD, then get a second hard drive kit for the Mac Mini and install a large standard SSD internally - I installed extra Micron 7.68TB SSD and a 4TB Samsung EVO SSD in the two 2014 Mac Minis for our two places. Cam using one HD for the OS, the second for the Music Library. So no external HD or anything else to worry about - very clean and compact.
You don’t need Big Sur … I would run the smallest OS you can footprint wise maybe 10.11.6 is enough.
remember unlike ROCK a Mac needs a good chunk of of RAM to run just the OS, so 16GB is a better place to be.
My MacMini is 2009 (late) and running el-capitan. 128gb SSD & 8Gb of Ram (using a NAS elsewhere). Cost me £40 and runs faultlessly.
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Fine for a small library and no DSD/DSP heavy lifting no doubt.
I had exactly the same model mac mini…until i switched to a NUC/Rock.
I much prefer the nuc, for convenience reasons. I never got the mini to avoid switching off / go to sleep when i just wanted it to stay on at all times. It probably did not help that we ran netflix off the same machine.
My 2009 has absolutely no issues running my convolution filters while upsampling to 768k (when I have experimented with that). It only started to struggle when I tried to test its limits by converting PCM to DSD512, but since I have no native DSD, it’s not something that is a real constraint for me. I also cannot run HQ Player, although I assume my Mini would run out of puff fairly quickly if I did. That said, I don’t think most people’s use case involves that much processing power.
If you are going to run a headless server, the actual computing requirements of Roon are actually not high for most people.
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Thanks everyone!
Why would someone want to upsample? Is there a real benefit in doing it?
I have a few dsd files, but I mostly just convert them to FLAC 24 192. And leave them like that. Is there a real benefit to convert PCM to DSD?
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It’s a can of worms best left to those that have the capability to do so. Personally I don’t do it.
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pablo, I purchased a mac mini late 2012 a few months back to use as a roon core. I did so to have access to roon 24 hours a day and not only when my macbook was open. it came with 16gb ram and a 500gb hard drive. given the cost it works like a charm. hope that helps. andrew.
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Most I upconvert to is 192k PCM with HQPlayer. Can I tell a difference? Ahdunno.
I will argue that I CAN tell a difference when using the HQPlayer filters. But upsampling? Not sure my system is revealing enough, but I keep experimenting.
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I too bought a (late 2012) MacMini (Intel i7 2.3GHz 16GB) just to run Roon Core. I had two SSD’s installed (one 500GB and the second one 2TB to hold my music) replacing the old/original HDD.
It is working fine w/o a single problem since November 2018. It automagically starts up each day at 07:00 and switches off at 00:50 everynight.
Edwin
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+1 for the NUC.
Easy to build & setup ROCK.
Once it’s running you won’t even know its there.
Never thought of automatically shutting down and starting up - I’ll do that - thanks for the suggestion.
