I’ve been wanting to try Roon for quite a while now. I love the concept and feel it’s a fantastic way to bring back context and feel to digital audio.
So, all I have to do is setup the whole thing; which is where things go south since I’m a total newbie when it comes to networks…
Could you please help me figure out what would be the best setup?
I just need to be able to control Roon with my iPad and I only have one room in which I’d like to play music.
I’ll be using the on-board dac of my cd-player (musical fidelity M6SCD), most likely through the A-sync USB input.
I was planning on buying a NUC and installing ROCK on it. I’ll have a separate USB drive with my music connected to the NUC. Then, from there, if I connect the NUC to my router (hopefully by Ethernet) on one hand and to my dac by USB to the other hand, would this be ok? Would I be able to control the NUC with my iPad? Do I need anything else?
Furthemore, my router is quite far away from the DAC. Would a power-line adapter be a suitable solution to go from router to NUC? Does this deliver the same performance as an Ethernet connection?
Sorry for all these questions and thanks in advance for your help,
You will need to connect the USB of the DAC (M6SCD) to an ethernet (ideally) or wifi endpoint. I use a Raspberry Pi with Ropieee or DietPi but those options might be beyond your techieness perhaps.
If you can get the USB connected to the ROCK NUC directly thats one option or you could use something like the Sonore microrendu - sorry I have no experience with this but others will chime in.
If wifi is your only option in your listening equipment area there could be other options. While Ethernet over Powerline is not ideal its also an option if you are able to set it up.
In you music room you are going to have a NUC/ROCK connected directly to the DAC via USB, and the music will be on an external USB drive also directly connected to the NUC. And the NUC would then be connected to the network and you would control it via your iPad which is wireless. So the chain would look like:
iPad (control) --> WiFi --> Router ----> Ethernet --> NUC/ROCK —> USB A --> DAC
…—> USB B --> Storage
I wanted to clarify the chain before answering your question because you mention this:
And my answer is dependent on where this would go in your chain. If this adapter is anywhere in the chain between the NUC and Storage or the NUC and the DAC, then my response would be No.
However, if it is only between the NUC and the control point (aka iPad) then I’d answer Maybe, try it and see how it works, but a direct Ethernet connection would be better.
To answer you question, it seems like it would look like the second option. The chain would be:
iPad (control) --> WiFi --> Router --> Ethernet --> PowerLine Adapter --> Electric circuit (in the walls) --> PowerLine Adapter --> Ethernet --> NUC/ROCK --> USB A --> DAC
…–> USB B --> Storage
Would that work?
My problem is the following: I cannot get my dac+amp to be close to the router. So, either I put the NUC close to the router (connection by Ethernet), but then I need to get to the DAC somehow (and I have no clue how); or I put the NUC close to the DAC but then I need to get wirelessly/through my walls from router to NUC.
As Daniel suggests, try it out. Given that your music source and your DAC are both directly connected to the NUC via USB, then a directly-wired ethernet connection to the rest of the network is not so critical. Don’t forget that the NUC will have a WiFi connection as well, so you could try this in place of a powerline connector.
The possible fly in the ointment would be if you are planning to use MQA quality Tidal albums - they would then be streamed over WiFi to the NUC. That might be pushing it a bit.
