Can the Roon Nucleus be a single box Solution like a Innuos Zen Mini

Im all about simplifying my life with turnkey solutions. I love how ROON with Tidal has expanded my music use and discovery. Currently I run ROON off a 2011 MacBook Air (dedicated) with 250 GB SSD, 4 GB Memory and external 1 T SSD. My music Library was built in iTunes… which I dislike. Have many duplicates, triplicates, MP3 recordings, etc. (Anyone have tips on how to strip down a MacBook Air as a dedicated
Music server?) Given Im in lockdown, I want to rip 1500 hard to find CD/HDCD’s that I paid for and rebuild my Library. Im considering the basic Nucleus, putting in a 2T SSD. I think ROON has the ability to rip CD"s and grab album art, catalogue and compare if I connect an Apple superdrive so I have a one box solution. My DAC is a Mytek Brooklyn+. I listen to mainly my Audeze LCD- XC and stream to 5 SONOS zones, sometimes to my KEF LS 50 Wireless. Anyone have experience with this? Any other solutions? If its more than one box and over $2k US not really comfortable. Thx!

I use my rock and a CD drive attached to do what ripping I need to do these days. Works perfectly well for my needs. However it is limited in how it operates compared to say an Innuos. On ripping it does not modify metadata of your ripped files ot put them in to nicely organised a artist/album folders or even apply track names. It just rips them in simple dated folders raw as it where in a selected cd rips location. The metadata is all done via Roon itself and only visible in Roon if it identifies the cd correctly.

So if you want to use them in another application you either need to export them out of Roon, as this process it will add basic metadata to them or use seperate tagging software to add the metadata to your rips. If your just using Roon and have no intent of using said rips in anything else then it’s a rip and leave.

I do the latter as I use other apps for on the go and need the metadata. I have yet to find Roon not actually find any cd I have ripped in its database services and it’s very simple to operate and seamless, put in cd it rips it ejects when done , album appears as latest edition in Roon.

So if your meticulous about metadata and want no fiddling then it might not be for you, and a system like Inuous might be better albeit less capable of other things. If you just use Roon and don’t care it’s pretty much all you need.

I use a Roon Nucleus with a 2T SSD. I have ripped many albums to local storage using EZ CD Audio Converter, which is set up on a Win10 computer and rips directly via my network to the Nucleus SSD. I always get proper metadata and it does all the formats you could ever hope for. It will also convert music between all audio file formats with a precise (64-bit floating point) audio engine. You can get a 21-day free trial of the software. Lifetime license costs under USD30, which I think is quite a bargain. Here’s a link if you’re interested. As I see you have a Mac, you’d have to run it in VM. (I have no financial or marketing interest in the product, BTW.)

I also have a Nucleus with 2TB SSD. I rip my CDs from a Win10 PC using dBPoweramp directly to the Nucleus internal storage. It’s worked every time so far and is a very simple process. One thing to consider is the backup process (for music, not the database). I use ViceVersa Pro to sync the files on the Nucleus with two external USB drives connected to my Win10 PC. It’s fast and reliable. Of course since I got Qobuz I rarely buy CDs any more.

I had quite a few as well orphans and odd bits if you click display format on LP cover you can go through your albums deleting anything you don’t want or just hide them from roon if you want to keep them for another reason.

James