I don’t know that a Roon Nucleus is the best buy ever, but I have been pleased with mine. I got it directly from Roon for $1119 on a Black Friday sale over 2 1/2 years ago and it has worked perfectly. I did not want to fool with building a NUC and wanted a “turn-key” device.
I’m sure there are other core devices that are just as good. It’s just a matter of what you prefer. Not everyone wants to spend the money for a Nucleus, and not everyone wants to build a NUC.
I know nothing about Linux and have never built a computer but 3 years ago bought all the components to build a NUC, read stuff online and watched videos and within a couple of hours had the thing up and running and it’s performed perfectly every day ever since. Not once have I had a problem. I also bought a NAS case and HDs and set it up just reading online guidance and it immediately linked to my NUC (at opposite ends of my house) and has never failed. I understand the desirability of plug and play but it’s an expensive option and doesn’t give the satisfaction you get from creating a system that actually works.
Dont hold your breath.
I’m in beta with the Apple Silicon native Roon Core right now. It’s coming. There will never be a Roon OS for any Apple devices. Apple hardware is not friendly to alternative operating systems. I know there are “hackintoshes”, but it’s a constant fight – the opposite of what Roon OS is trying to achieve.
Ridiculous 
Danny, I was being bold.
With a NUC7i7DNKE based ROCK server, my requirements for my Roon Core serving duties are well meet for all my Zones & Endpoints.
Roon is used and enjoyed daily since 2015 and the initial Beta.
Some Product usability suggestions in the Feature Requests for both ROCK, Roon Core & Roon Remotes.
Simon
Agreed, I’m surprised hackintosh was even mentioned/considered.
There is absolutely nothing practical about building a hackintosh just to run Roon. Especially now with the support for intel becoming less and less with every macOS release.
I used a Mac Mini to run the Roon Server for a very long time because the price of a new Nucleus put me off, but then I jumped at the opportunity of getting one when Roon offered a good promotion last year. For me, it’s no brainer to have a dedicated Nucleus running the Roon Server and storing a large local library.
The nucleus is actually a rip off, praying on audiophiles with money, who also fall for the same missinformation in the audio world.
The Nucleus is simply a low specced intel NUC with a fancy case they purchase from an OEM (Which you can find online…) and they preload a roon ROCK image that’s it. It’s the easiest money grab ever, and the internals are not ‘better’ for audio than just buying your own NUC and preloading ROCK.
They missed an opportunity in getting a better PSU and also galvanically isolating some of the internal parts like the USB ports for example. That would make it worth spending lots of cash on, as you could avoid buying a streamer and plug any non galvanically isolated DAC directly in without worrying about grounding issues with USB.
I am sure Roon know this, it’s an easy money grab.
I am happy to support Roon using a Nucleus plus. This adds to my fantastic Roon experience.
Roon has completely transformed my way to enjoy music.
That’s beside the point tho, you can just do it yourself.
I think you’re misinformed.
Roon have never maintained that the Nucleus ‘sounds’ better than a standard NUC. Instead, they have offered a turnkey, silent server for those of us who want a ‘plug ‘n play’ solution to running Roon. Because the Nucleus is hardly a mass-market product, the purchase price is predictably higher.
As for your comments about the ‘lack’ of galvanic isolation on the USB ports, I suggest you do some research. Galvanic isolation on the USB Bus is only required at the DAC end of the chain, and not the server. Hence Roon have not ‘compromised’ to the extent you maintain.
Some of us don’t want to “just do it ourself”. I paid $1119 for my Nucleus. Well worth the price TO ME.
Sure. But that does not validate the general statement that “The Nucleus is the Best Buy ever”. It may be for some people but certainly not all or even most.
Roon Nucleus is a great product if you don’t want to build a NUC.
I think a dedicated Nucleus is probably the best option for Roon streaming, any OS on any computer is intrinsically noisy, even the small green Linux-based device.
What do you base this opinion on? Hardware has a much bigger impact on “noise” than the software. Also, if you are using a Roon Core and connecting to an endpoint over Ethernet, the choice of server hardware/software is basically irrelevant as Ethernet does not pass on the “noise” from the server. The endpoint choices become critical though!
Nothing to base on. I know my comment is controversial, but being a software engineer, I know that any OS can run any junk processes that are not needed for Roon streaming.
Btw, when I say noises, I mean both software and hardware generated noises, specifically by some heavy, high cpu consuming processes, which will interrupt the Roon audio processing.
In what way will they “interrupt the Roon audio processing”? Surely this will only happen if you have another process that is using 100% of the CPU, such that audio processing can’t take place. In my experience, running Roon Server on a Mac mini M1, no other process has ever managed to interrupt audio processing to the point where there was any degradation.
Roon OS, is an OS. The Nucleus is a computer.
Roon OS also runs processes that are not needed for streaming: metadata collection, running backups, carrying out a search, and so on.
I take your initial point, the Nucleus is a designed to run Roon, so should be able to do it will, but I don’t think you can infer that other computers or operating systems will be inherently worse simply because they perform other tasks at the same time - that’s how computers work.
The best buy is an Intel NUC, running whatever processor is needed and whatever GEN one can get (excepting GEN11), and an installation of ROCK.
That’s how they work now. Back in the day, the one where we were walking fifteen miles to school in the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways, we had to load a program by feeding the darn computer paper tape, and then it would only run that single program till we stopped it. Good times!
Operating systems rule!