Innuous Zen Mini as Roon Core - any good?

Sorry, I haven’t been following this entire thread, but have you tried backing up from your PC to a USB drive, then restoring from the USB drive to your Innuous?

My point is that to point Roon to a share on your Mac or Windows PC, you have to setup the share correctly ON the Mac or PC. Did you review the appropriate Roon FAQ pages?

Yes @Rugby, I’m sure that is the issue Robert needs to sort out.

In my case my ‘Multimedia’ file is a Shared folder on my NAS.
If there is no designated Shared folder set up in the PC or MAC then Roon cannot see anything to connect to.

Either that or as I think someone said earlier there may be a firewall.
But my guess would be on your suggestion.

No I haven’t. I was hoping to avoid that, but am wishing I had just bitten the bullet and gone down that road in the first place. I currently have a USB stick in the back of the PC copying across the latest backup folder. Saying it will take over an hour as I initially feared. Then I have no idea how to get Roon to see the USB when it’s stuck in the back of the Innuous Zen Mini. Which will then take forever to restore it.

Also, this all seems pointless as the Roon server on the PC is regularly backing up to the ZenMini, so there is a copy on there already!

Is it just me or is this all a bit too painful? Rhetorical, no need to answer that!

I am almost 100% sure I have been there and done that. Although, the article you shared is for a Mac and my Roon Server is running on Windows 10. Although, as I said, I am almost certain I have done it properly, but maybe I haven’t seen the correct Windows 10 version of the article you kindly shared?

Oh, I’m sorry, I somehow got the impression it was a MAC. For Windows, you might try my post here

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Found the Windows version. Yes, definitely done all of that and checked it last weekend. I am beginning to think I need to shut down everything on my network and bring it all back up again. Including the ethernet netgear switches, the router, the Innuous, the Windows PC, the lot.

You seem to be getting the wrong end of the stick. There’s nothing to say the community won’t help you get it up and running, and by the looks of it you’re getting some solid suggestions to help you.

[Moderated]…

I probably know less about this than most people who are trying to help you other than to relate my experience. I had the Roon core running on my Dell XPS 15 Windows 10 laptop. I didn’t like some of the issues and purchased a Roon Nucleus just over one year ago.

First thing I did was plug a USB drive into my Dell XPS 15 and did a Roon backup to the USB drive. Next, since the Nucleus comes with Roon already installed, I did not have to install Roon. Had I built a NUC or used some other computer device, I would have installed the Roon core software. Finally, I plugged the USB drive into the Nucleus and followed the Roon instructions to “restore” the backup from the USB drive to the Nucleus. Everything worked perfectly with no issues.

Where I did have problems and found help here was copying my handfull of music files from my laptop to my Nucleus SSD that I had installed. Once I got it through my head that I should be using Windows File Explorer to drag and drop those files, it was a piece of cake.

EDIT: The USB drive I used for the transition now stays plugged into my Nucleus for automatic nightly Roon backups. It is a 1TB drive in a case that I already had from a previously retired computer.

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Boom!:boom:

That was it! Thanks @Rugby

For me there was no need to Enable Insecure Guest Access in Windows

I found this in a Microsoft article…

By enabling insecure guest logons, this setting reduces the security of Windows clients.

More information

This setting has no effect on SMB1 behavior. SMB1 continues to use guest access and guest fallback.

It also said

SMB1 is uninstalled by default in latest Windows 10 and Windows Server configurations.

I would NEVER have found that if you hadn’t pointed that out. I still have no idea what it means. I wonder if Roon support realise that this is causing issues?

Thanks for letting me know and sticking with it!

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Finally giving in. No time for this nonsense.

Thanks everyone for your help and encouragement. I would have given up if I wasn’t pushed. Especially the Netorking tip about SMB1 in Windows 10 from @Rugby.

I will finally be able to let you all know if the Innuos Zen Mini Mk3 as Roon Core is any good?!

Not for a user friendly Core transfer, that’s for sure!

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There’s sometimes an argument for using bog standard computers as they don’t have “special” features.

Hello Robert: glad to read that you’ve managed to sort this out especially as I felt partly responsible having responded positively about the ZenMini as a Roon Core and because I couldn’t offer any trouble-shooting advice. I admire your persistence - I think it would have defeated me.

Can I ask how you are now going to do your ongoing Roon back-ups? I ask because in the 3 months I’ve been using Roon I’ve only done a single back-up (to DropBox). My (well my wife’s) DropBox storage is now full and I don’t fancy paying the monthly fee just to back up Roon. So I’ve been considering an external flash drive or separate Macbook back-up but have been concerned about this option given the issues you’ve had.

Thanks.

PS. Hope you like the LPSU when it arrives.

Hi @Jonathan_Smith1

Happy Christmas.

I don’t think my problem is so much Roon as a Core per se, but switching from a Windows Core to a Innuos Core then restoring a backup. It still isn’t working. I had to switch back to Windows to get it working over Christmas. The Roon Core on the Innuos now can’t see my music library which is stored on the Innuos and I don’t know how to fix that either. :roll_eyes: It was fine before the backup was restored, now it can’t find the library. Probably something to do with Windows having the drive mapped to Z: being somehow carried over in the backup. Yet another example of how difficult Roon is to manage.

I expect if I had just decided to start all over again with a new Core disregarding my tags and play history etc., it would have been fairly painless.

As to your question, after my experience with backups to DropBox/locan folders on my network synced to OneDrive, Networking issues with Roon requiring a formal computing qualification or experience working in the field there is no way I am going to rely on any of that. I bought a new USB flash-drive and intend to use an old external USB drive for a second backup, If I can get Roon Core working properly on the Innuos I will backup directly onto the USB drives.

The LPSU arrived on Santa’s sleigh yesterday. Not tried it out yet but I cant wait to see how much difference it makes. :crossed_fingers:

Hope you’re having a decent Christmas under the circumstances.

Happy Christmas to you too Robert. We’re in Tier 4 so very limited family gathering unfortunately but that’s a whole different topic… good to have a break from wall-to-wall Zoom calls nonetheless.

Sorry to hear it’s not all sorted - I must have got the wrong end of the stick from the earlier posts. My “use case” does seem more straight forward (in that I started with the ZenMini as the Roon Core from Day 1) but, despite that, doing the database back-ups is no picnic either. I spent a good few hours late on Xmas day after the kids had gone to bed trawling the forum / wider Internet on backing up the Roon database to a USB drive, either connected to the ZenMini or connected to my MacBook (used as a controller rather than Core).

There is a similar thread on this community which addresses this for PCs (Backing Up Roon Database) which may be useful for you (think you run Windows on a PC?) but nothing for Mac per se. So I’ve logged a support call with Innuos as I think it’s a networking issue between the ZenMini and the Mac.

I have previously done a network share on MacBook folders without any issues so I think this side of the connection is fine. I’m hoping this is problem Innuos have encountered before and this will then allow me to avoid paying £9 a month to DropBox just for the Roon database back-up. Innuos have been very responsive in my limited experience thus far so fingers crossed. If I get anything I think may be helpful I’ll drop it on this thread.

Cheers,

Jonathan

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Hi @Jonathan_Smith1
I finally got it all sorted. Finally, finally this time, I hope! :slight_smile:
see…

Do let me know how you get on with this because I am certain this is going to be my next issue too. My new setup is my Innuos Zen Mini as a Roon Core and player (along with various other players around the place including Bluesound Node 2i, various Sonos devices, Apple TVs and Chrome-cast displays).
I use a MacBook and sometimes a Windows Laptop, or my iPhone/iPad as Roon Remotes. I’ve just purchases a new USB stick for the Roon backup. Not tried it yet, I’ll let you know how I get on. Definitely worth avoiding Dropbox subs just for a Roon backup.

Going to plug the LPSU in tomorrow/soon. I want to spend a bit of listening time without it beforehand though. I’ve not had the chance due to all this messing around with Roon setup. I’ll be sure to report back on it once I’ve had a good listen!

A quick update, now I’ve got the Innuos Zen Mini running as a Roon Core, with the Windows backup successfully restored.

It sounds great. No better or worse than the Windows core. However, it doesn’t seem to handle grouping rooms very well. For example, when grouping my Kitchen/Diner (Bluesound node 2i) with the lounge (Zen Mini) there is a distinct delay creating an ‘echo’ effect when listening in the hallway between the two rooms. I have switched back and forth a few times between the Innuos Core and Windows Core. The Windows core handles the Grouping as well as Sonos - perfectly with no delay.

If anyone knows a fix I may try and troubleshoot this. But to be honest, I think I am going to look for a stand-alone solution to replace or upgrade my Windows 10 core running on my old iMac.

For those looking for a clean solution, without any separate server or requirement for room/zone grouping, the Zen Mini is great Core. But this is a dealbreaker for me. I wish I knew sooner, but hey ho, now I know.

Thanks to the Community members who helped me through this trial set-up. I have learned a lot about my home network and Roon in the process, so not a complete waste of time.

Happy New Year!

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Hello Robert: just catching up on this after a crazy few weeks. Surprised and sorry to hear that the ZenMini struggles with multi-room. I don’t use it often but I occasionally have my kitchen Naim box (Uniti Atom) and a couple of Sonos SL1s grouped (using Airplay) and there’s never been an issue (although I’m not doing anything fancy with DSP).

I’ve done some more digging on the back-up front and it turns out that the issue is the OS I’m running on my (old - 2013) MacBook Air. I need to upgrade that and haven’t had time - the missus has also got a new PC which came bundled with extra DropBox capacity so I’m sorted for back-ups for the moment. When I upgrade my OS (or get a new Mac) I’ll try the local back-up again - and report back.

Otherwise, I’m enjoying both Roon and my ZenMini - not quite my end game system yet but no urge to tinker again just yet.

Cheers,

Jonathan

Hi @Eric_Purcell

How’re you doing?

I bought the Innuos LPSU for my Zen Mini. Made quite a big improvement to my surprise.

I remembered your comments about the Denafrips Ares 2. Have you ever tried comparing it to the internal DAC on your Zen mini? I am wondering if it’s worth taking the plunge on one. I see they are getting some rave reviews online.

Just wondering if you are still pleased with your setup and what it’s like living with it for a while?

Thanks in advance for your comments.