I have found a post stating that Roon buffers online streaming content from Tidal or Qobuz on the SSD Roon Core is installed on, but this isn’t the case for audio files played from the local library.
Is there a possibility to give the option of buffering local audio files to the SSD Roon Core is installed on?
On a similar note, if I have my audio files on a NAS and use a NUC with ROCK installed on it, would it buffer the audio files played from the NAS on the SSD where Roon Core is installed in the NUC?
Can you share a link to that post? I don’t know but it seems unlikely to me that it would buffer a few tens of megabytes for a track on the disk if it has gigabytes of RAM available.
As far as I am aware, there are no options for changing the buffering strategy.
What are you trying to achieve or which problem are you trying to solve?
I don’t seem to find this post, but it was written by one of the Roon founders in regard to memory playback question. We tried this with Tidal and indeed it buffers on the SSD drive Roon Core is installed on.
What I am trying to achieve is a better sound quality since certain SLC SSDs provide notably better sound quality compared to regular SSDs or HDDs.
I assume you’re referring to the posts about Innuos and ram playback, Roon does not support this and it was deemed unnecessary and would be detrimental to the Roon experience. It only caches internet content to the ssd to help with playback latency issues as the internet is up and down.
I guess you are correct. We have confirmed Tidal content is being cached on the SSD Roon Core is installed. Since this is possible for internet streaming content, why it cannot be possible for local or NAS files? The audio quality will be greatly improved, such is the case for streaming Tidal or Qobuz.
I believe that it sends the file to the Roon Ready streamer to cache one track at a time. Just before the next track is scheduled to start it will send the file. It’s pretty obvious what is going on if you watch (tail -f in Linux) the log files while the core is playing. If you believe that where the track is cached impacts sound quality then it would probably be better to ask the streamer manufacturer how they handle caching.
I have to apologize for posting this question here on the Support thread, but I did it in order to catch the attention of the Roon Support team.
If the moderators decide to move this to Feature Suggestions, I would understand, but I am really hoping on a solution here.
To be very clear, installing Roon Core on a SLC SSD makes Tidal or Qobuz sounding superb. It is because the streaming content is being buffered on the SSD.
Same applies if the SLC SSD is used for audio files storage and music is played from it. It is much better than MLC or TLC SSDs or any HDD.
But the real problem is that the SLC SSDs are extremely expensive and offer very limited capacity. So this is the reason to ask for buffering of local files to the SSD.
I’ve taken you up on this (and moved it to Feedback - for Roon Labs), because your observations on SLC SSDs are not something that the Support Team can address.
I think this was the right thing to do, but I am still hoping to hear from Roon on this subject.
On a similar note, is there an email address to use for direct contact so I don’t contaminate the user forums?
It is because of the SLC SSDs superiority. The results may be because of less jitter/phase noise or the error correction, or all of the above, but it is a fact that we have confirmed with experimenting.
Please see my reply to Akimo. I hope this explains it. Furthermore, installing a low-phase-noise clock and low-noise power supplies on the SLC card controller makes things even better.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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The SLC is indeed superior to most OTS SSD consumer disks, with lower error rates and increased MTTF. However, I don’t think anyone would “hear” that in any way unless you are testing against really badly flawed SSDs. I think you’re probably hearing something else.
Have you actually measured an improvement, or are you just earing it? The human sense of hearing is one of the worst and most fallible instruments available.