Is Roon compatible with new Mac with M1 chip?

Yes, I got a bit confused, as there are two different answers, Yes and No. can anyone confirm?

Thanks

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As long as Apple M1 hardware supports all iOS and iPadOS apps, then it should be able to run Roon iPadOS app as remote/endpoint. But as for running full bore Roon as core, doubtful. Or only with performance compromising Rosetta 2 x86 emulation.

AJ

Hello @mitchell_lim,

I know the development team has been working with the Apple Silicon DTK, let me check with them before we make any announcements.

-John

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Thank you. I’d be interested to know too!

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I’m looking forward to Roon Core support on ARM in general. Higher-end ARM has been on par with x86-64 for a while now and lower power requirements seem like a good fit for audio applications (passive cooling)

I’m hopeful I can get rid of the intel NUC in favour of a Mac Mini M1 and save some energy and space. Is the license easily transferred?

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So simple, just login with your new computer. Done

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When Apple went from PowerPC to Intel a few years ago, the first systems were bundled with a piece of software called Rosetta that was used in order to translate software built for PowerPC and run on an Intel environment, I guess they will use a similar solution for these new transition.

Even they could have more problems with the new macOS then with the new processor. I mean common problems that arise with new versions of every operating system.

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The license is easy to transfer but you need to back up and restore your roon library. There is an article in the knowledge base.

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Thank you for pointing this out!

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Since Roon runs almost idle most of the time you won’t save much energy in practice by switching to an arn processor. A modern intel cpu only draws around 2 watts of energy when idling. The rest of the energy consumption comes from the motherboard, the memory and in case you are using a lineair power supply, for 50% of the power supply itself. My Roon server was on a energy meter for half a year, average consumption is around 11 watts, that’s less then my router consumes. with LPS it consumes around 23 watts idle, reason enough to switch back to smps (wich sounds 100% identical btw)

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There is a new rosetta and if you believe apple, the overhead/loss is small and apps may run faster under it than native due to the speed increase. Or so their marketing department says. I cannot imagine that the roon team will not soon support it natively anyway.

I went through the previous Rosetta period, from PowerPC to Intel, with no problem at all.

Im thinking about upgrading to the new M1 chip Mac Mini as well (but from a 2011 mac mini), however I just read that this is the first Mac Mini to have a fan, so having second thoughts.

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Get a Nuc, less expensive and more efficient :wink:

I don’t where you have read this but all mac mini’s too to this date have a fan in them. You’ll problably never hear it though because it is dead silent when average processor load is low.

As for Mac in general. I’m a professional Mac user and in my profession nobody in his right mind is upgrading to a new MacOS on the first day of release. Strong advice is to wait a few months, up untill xx.3 version.

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You know, I had a post about early adopters of Gen 1 tech… but it got forum eaten. But, yes.

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It’s doubtful Roon Core will run (well) on M1 Macs? Why?

I guess they mean if it was using emulation rather than recompiled for the chip.

Benchmarks are showing these M1 chips as fast or faster than many of the Intel and AMD desktop CPUs at a lot less watts. I’m looking forward to upgrading my core to one once there’s a native app.