I’m running Roon core on my Dell XPS 15 i7 with 6 cores, 32 gigs of RAM, and 1TD SSD. How many cores should I allocate to Roon? I currently have it set on 4 cores. I’m running crossfeed and max PCM power of 2.
I understand that Roon is still mainly one core per zone, with some parallel exceptions for DSD heavy DSP. If you are browsing at the same time I believe that occurs in parallel to playing.
So allocating one core per DSP zone and an extra one for browsing would be my suggestion.
What does a usage monitor show with 4 cores ?
23.9x I only run one zone at a time. So, maybe I should only run 2 cores for Roon?
2% to 4% CPU usage if that’s what you mean. This is after switching Roon to 2 cores.
If you not doing anything else on the machine at all then run all but one
I’m usually visiting various other forums, etc. or working on a spreadsheet. Nothing that requires much computing power. I’ll go back to 4.
The drop down menu shows 12 cores. Why is that? It’s a 6 core i7 processor. Using Task Manager - Performance, it says 12 logical processors. Is that what the drop down menu is referring to? How many of those should I use for Roon? Thanks.
You are nowhere near hardware constrained, either in Roon or for the other tasks you describe. Just leave it alone, let the operating system do its job and everything will be fine. One of the greatest pieces of advice that I wish I had always followed “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
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You can use cores in the following ways. For playback, parallelise sigma delta setting. This will spread playback loads over more than one core. It should only ever be required if you are doing real heavy lifting, i.e. upsampling to big DSD numbers and convolution. On an i7 it shouldn’t ever be needed.
Background Audio Analysis. Used when you rip a disk or are analysing your library. I’d set it to 2 max.
On demand Audio Analysis. Used when you hit play on a ripped but yet to be analysed track. I leave this off.
You aren’t actually changing playback behaviour by adjusting the number of cores used in the above settings. Only the parallelise setting. And if you have a CPU score of 2 or over, you don’t need to use it.
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But my question is how many should I allocate for Roon. Roon wants an answer in the setup. I can choose anywhere from 1 to 12? Thanks
Allocate one. Two if you have a lot of files to analyse. In normal use they don’t matter. In playback they make no difference.
Thanks. I have no files of my own and about 700 Tidal and Qobuz.
Are you talking about the choice being asked for in Settings/Library/Background Audio Analysis Speed?
If so, then the answer is up to you. The more cores you allocate, the faster the background analysis will be completed. The trade-off being that there’s less horsepower available for playing your music while this analysis is being done. If you are doing DSP on one or more of your zones, you might run out of horsepower and hear drop-outs or stuttering.
When we first import our music into the Roon library, most of us make a choice between either throwing all the cores at the audio analysis to get it over and done with quickly (and resisting the temptation to play music until the analysis is done) or just leaving it at the default of Throttled and listening to music. The latter means that the audio analysis will take much longer.
When you play a track that hasn’t yet had its audio analysed, then the setting of the On-Demand Audio Analysis Speed is used. Here the default is to have is set at Fast.
If you have no local tracks there is no audio analysis to be done ever
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Yeah - I’d just finished typing my answer up when I saw that James doesn’t have any local files 
Yes, of course, it’s up to me. I just wanted some help in knowing how many cores I should allocate without having to do a lot of research. I just want to listen to music. I have one zone, no music of my own, about 700 Tidal and Qobuz albums in my library, and a very powerful laptop running the Roon core. I can set Roon on 1 to 12. Based on the varying advice here, I have set it on 2.
But how many cores? 1 to 12 is my choice.
Then you can set both of those to off. They only relate to analysing your own files and if you have none or don’t intend to add more they don’t matter. They will never be used.
Thank you.
Beyond basic processing, 1 core is used per simultaneous stream for DSP. So, for example, if you are going to be playing to 3 different endpoints simultaneously, each with their own DSP, then you would want to provide more cores.
That is why there is no one simple answer; each user will have different use cases. How large your library, how many simultaneous endpoints, and type of DSP and/or room correction done, all play into selection of processor and processor speed.
While there is no audio analysis of files, yet, for streaming sources, streamed albums in your library DO count in terms of deciding core processor speed and type, as though they were local files. So, the hit to the Core database for 1000 streaming files, is pretty much the same as 1000 local files.