HTPC running RoonServer only, connected to my Hi-Fi via a USB DAC
I use a Surface Pro device with Roon installed as a remote control
Everything works fine
Now, I am thinking off replacing my HTPC with an Auralic Aries, and I take it that Auralic Aries would then be roon-ready as a roon endpoint. What does this do to my architecture? I don’t want to setup RoonServer on my NAS (I am not sure I can either), where would the roon core run in this scenario? On the Surface Pro I guess?
You wouldn’t want to install the Core on the Surface unless it was connected by Ethernet because the audio stream always goes through the Core. Three Wi-Fi legs is asking for trouble.
You still need a computer to run the Core (unless your NAS is capable), so you would keep the HTPC but move it away from the stereo and connect the Aries to your DAC. That would keep the noise of the computer away from the audio.
Alternatively, you could get a microRendu for half the cost of the Aries and use the rest upgrading the NAS to comfortably run RoonServer.
Ok, got it, so it would work but potentially have performance issues, I will take your advice and look at either moving the HTPC over to another room (I prefer that) or looking at the microRendu, although I am not sure how I would be able to install the DAC drivers on the microRendu…
On the NAS side of things, does Roon recommend any specific NAS models?
Mine is a Naim DAC-V1 model… I am used to Windows and having to set the audio properties for exclusive access and 24-bit playback, not sure how that is handled on Linux machines (I assume the microrendu is a flavor of Linux).
Looked on the Naim site and it appears that linux is not supported. maybe @agillis could provide some help on if there would be any issues with your DAC and the microRendu.
The microRendu will work with ant USB 2.0 audio spec complaint DAC. This is very different from Windows where you need a driver for any sample rate above 96k.
A lot of users are using the microRendu with Naim.
Some people have managed to get Roon Server running on a NAS but performance is very low. I would recommend our sonicTransporter. When used with your NAS and the micoRendu you will get very good performance and great sound quality.
the QNAP TVS-x71 are awesome in the i3 or i5 (i7 is too hot and the non-coreiX sucks)
I am experimenting with a new configuration of them that seems pretty sweet… the TVS-471 has 4 bays, which I suggest you configure:
1 bay with a small SSD (120GB, about $40 right now) for the Roon Server install + database
2 bays with 6tb drives RAID mirrored
1 bay with 6tb drive for weekly backup off the mirrored set
the SSD gives you get fast performance for Roon (I would never run Roon’s database on a spinning disk)
the 2 6tb mirrored drives gives you 6tb of fault tolerant storage for music (about 15k cd quality albums)
the last 6tb drive gives you a weekly or biweekly local backup of your music (remember, RAID is fault tolerance, and not backup)
We’ve not made the QNAP package for running the Core, but the TVS-x71 series is the QNAP to do that with, once that package is available.
The whole thing is under $2k and pretty awesome to stuff in a closet or rack away from your listening room.
As for a NAS take a look at the sonicTransporter AP. It has an i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and an 8TB driver. OS and Roon database are on a very fast SSD for speed.
The 8TB drive is cached with an SSD so it spends most of it’s time powered down. This make the sonicTransporter AP completely silent (when the 8TB driver is not spinning) This is much better then a NAS which has several loud fans.
The sonicTransporter AP also has built in CD ripping capabilities.