I wondered whether too ROCK can be installed on a Mac mini? if so which models should I look out for? I only use Mac systems so an Asus NUC is not for me. Thanks
Describe your network setup
all ok, it's just about the Mac mini thing. I have Roon Server on a QNAP NAS currently but the music cuts out occasionally. I can't swap disks to SSD's as they are large disks and SSD's would be too costly, so I thought of ROCK on a Mac mini
It may be possible to install ROCK on older Mac Minis with an Intel CPU, but it is not necessarily painless (the built-in Ethernet might not work IIRC). In any case it wouldn’t be an officially supported configuration.
It’s definitely not possible to install ROCK on modern Minis with Apple Silicon (ARM) CPUs. In this case, install the Roon app (which installs the server, too). It runs natively on Apple Silicon.
Ah OK, thank you for a quick reply. Maybe I’ll get another 2 bay qnap for ssd’s. seems an easier solution. I did look at the Nucleus One but I gather the memory is not upgradeable for future proof.
much appreciated
Also, keep in mind that also not even every single Intel or Asus NUC model supports ROCK properly although ROCK can be installed easily on most of them.
So, the chances are extremely low that you would be able to properly install or even run ROCK on Intel Mac Minis.
People did the install on Intel Minis and there are forum posts about it, so it’s probably possible, at least on some models, but may not be straightforward.
Anyway, there’s not much reason now that Roon switched the Mac server to .NET instead of Mono and performance is fine now on macOS.
It is, but it’s not very necessary. The One is rated up to 100k tracks and the built-in RAM should suffice for this with most libraries. If not, you can add more RAM, and most libraries probably can be larger than 100k in this case.
This is most certainly overkill. All you conceivably need are 8 GB or 16 GB if you want to push it.
An N1 will most likely be unbearably slow long before you have a database size that needs 32 GB
Roon OS does not swap memory to disk. Therefore, adding more RAM does NOT make it faster. The only symptom of too little RAM is that it crashes. As long as it does not crash, you don’t need more RAM.
Some of our users have installed ROCK on a Mac before, but this is not a supported configuration and it is in Tinkering territory, so I will move your thread to this section.