Flawless performance in Apple Silicon so far

All the talk now is about Roon ARC but I’d like to acknowledge the big improvement Roon has made to Apple machines as a core. I had lots of issues both in intel macs and also in my Mac Studio like excessive RAM usage after days, trackings taking long to start, slow searches… my first impression with the 2.0 is the best possible. Everything working smoothly for almost a week now, and the Roon iOS remote doesn’t even crash. Kudos to the team!

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Yes, I am having the same experience. My M1 Mac mini has been flawless running Roon 2.0 and HQPlayer Desktop. Memory usage is about half and performance has been great!

Hear, hear…not one crash thus far (just jinxed it LOL), and the ram usage is no longer gluttonous. Great

Could you or someone else elaborate on what the memory usage is? Wondering if 8 gb in an M1 Mini would be enough for Roon 2.0 and Dirac.

I don’t know how much memory Dirac uses. But, I would think 8GB would be enough. I have 16GB in my M1 Mac mini. I am using HQPlayer and I think 16GB is more appropriate for that setup.

It is great to hear the good feedback on native ARM version of Roon 2.0. I am considering to migrate Roon Core from Nucleus to ARM Mac. But Roon ARC requires port forwarding so for security and power comsumption concern maybe I will keep using Nucleus for a while.

Great to hear that. How well does it handle SRC & DSP? I run convolution filters in some zones and my sonicTransporter i7 struggles in some cases — especially with the few DSD albums I have. I’m curious if it runs better on Apple Silicon.

I am using some pretty stout DSD settings with HQPlayer Desktop along with Roon Server on my M1 Mac mini and it handles it without issue.

Do you know which Intel CPU is in your sonicTransporter i7?

Sounds promising!

All I know is that it is a quad core.

Well, the M1 is more powerful than the Intel i9 in the sonicTransporter i9…so I am pretty sure the M1 Mac mini would be a step up.

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I agree, except that my iMac m1 24” core machine loses connection with my Bluesound Node 2i streamer the moment it goes to sleep. Weirdly ARC works fine so there is a bug somewhere to be sure.

You probably need to tweak your sleep settings on the Mac

I would, except ARC works fine and nothing has changed since 1.8 when it worked wonderfully.

I don’t know about Dirac, but, I currently have 16GB of RAM in my M1 Mac Mini. When Roon was previously using the Rosetta layer to run, it was routinely gobbling upwards of 5-6GB. After the move to native in 2.0, my Roon core is now hovering between 2.5-2.8GB. Quite the improvement!

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100% Agree. V2.0 has been rock solid on my M1 Mac Mini. Thank you! It was worth the wait!

Thanks @Joe_Strain. That’s nice to hear. Another anecdote to Apple’s switch to ARM processors and Roon’s developers’ abilities to take advantage of it.

Currently Dirac recommends 2GB of RAM. So given your experience it seems 8GB with an M1 processor might be enough for dedicated Roon Core 2.0 use.

As of last week, Roon’s Mac OS system requirements were 8GB for RAM — on a core i3 and Mac OS 10.15+. No mention of Apple Silicon nor performance differences between Roon 1.8 Legacy/Roon 2.0.

Also no issues to report here (MacMiniM1/8GB).

How much memory does Roon (and RAATServer) uses Roon 2.0 on your MacMini(M1)?
For me it app. 2 GB for both (1.8 GB + 200 MB).

Just over 1GB for my setup with ~1100 albums. But, HQPlayer is doing most of the work so I am not surprised.

Hmm, I have about the same number of albums.
Why Roon needs 2 GB on my system?

I will do a restart and check again.

+1 on a successful M1 Mac Mini start. Thanks Roon Team.