I am on the cusp of starting my two week trial of Roon and would like some opinions/suggestions on getting the best performance from my set-up.
My Hi-Fi is currently on a container ship headed towards Adelaide, South Australia (its been in storage for the last 10 years waiting for me to stop galavanting about).
I have a MacPro 2009, (firmware hacked to a 2010 model) with 2 x 8 Core 3.06 GHz processors, 24GB of Ram 240GB Samsung Pro SSD (containing macOS Sierra and applications), 1 TB Samsung Evo SSD (iTunes library), 3 other HDD (containing Movies/Tv Shows and a Time Machine backup) and a 240 GB OWC Mercury Accelsior E2 SSD (With 2 partitions, one has my iMovie library and the other has a freshly installed copy of Sierra 10.12.2, more on this later).
The MacPro will be connected directly to a Meridian MS600 via 10 metres of CAT 6A shielded patch cable which will supply a Meridian G02=>G57=>KEF Reference 1 speakers (its an old but really nice set up). The MacPro has two Ethernet ports, the other one is connected to my Asus Router and Billion Modem.
I also have a B&W Zepellin Air which I use via AirPlay.
I found out about Roon last October from the Meridian Unplugged website and since then I’ve been waiting for my Hi-Fi to arrive here in Adelaide and lurking on the Roon community, reading up.
My intention is to run Roon and the freshly installed version of Sierra off of the Mercury Accelsior E2 SSD. Whenever I want to have a music session I will boot into the Accelsior with Sierra and Roon, there won’t be anything else running at all on this OS. Control will be via the Mac and an iPhone 6s and in a month or two an iPad Pro.
Is this a good idea? Or will it cause issues? My Mac tends to be left on (not always) but does go into sleep mode.
@oneofmany I would advise you just keep things simple to begin with, see if you like Roon first then if you decide to purchase you can experiment all you like, by the way don’t forget to set the MS600 to fixed analog rather than variable by browsing to its IP address on your web browser of choice and setting it on the config page.
@Tony_Reimann I have been doing a lot of reading on other Hi-Fi forums where “experts” reccomend running an audio server with a few as possible processes running on the OS, so I had set up the separate instance of MacOS with nothing else running, no other software installed, no spotlight and no iCloud integration.
It seemed sensible to me but then I am no computer expert.
They say that usually for servers with USB or SPDIF attached DACs. The Roon architecture is different in that the server sends the audio stream to an end point which has the DAC attached. In your case I guess the MS600 is acting as the end point. (Roon can play directly from the server too). Anyway its easy for you to test and let your ears decide.
Skip the direct connection and just plug everything into your wireless router instead. No point of using a straight cable. Also functionality with various remotes will improve. (iPad’s Macbook’s etc.)
Thanks @Tony_Reimann I think I’ll delete the other instance of MacOS and just install it from my login to start with. Since I created the second instance of Sierra my Mac has been acting a little strange.
I may eventually just create a separate login just for Roon with nothing else running. That way I can compare the two.
Fixed analog is if you are running the MS200 output to an integrated amplifier with a volume control, variable analog would be if you were running the analog output to a power amplifier and had to use the MS200 for volume control.