Sorry no idea its free delivery in UK you’d have to ask them.
But the machine was never in my listening area before it was hidden away in a cupboard in another room. So the fans where never heard anyway. So it must have been polluting something.
I guess I should just enjoy it. I don’t think it’s as fast or as powerful as the recommended NUCs for ROCK as the CPU is a little older and has a lower frequency overall, but I guess that’s why it’s fanless and such a small chassis comopared to some, it, but for my needs it’s perfect and flawless so far.
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I am so happy with this. Just had 4 zones running independently and the server never broke sweat and searching as responsive as ever. All sounded sweet to. Thinking of changing my USB drive next and get a 2TB ssd as I have enclosure already I can use,
i am considering this as an option for ROCK as well…
did you order without an OS and then install ROCK as per the roon install guide including the BIOS update?
https://kb.roonlabs.com/ROCK_Install_Guide
thanks!!
Yeah ordered without OS and just installed ROCK no need to update the bios.
good to hear. this is a nice alternative to a NUC and the build quality looks solid. thanks for the info!!
It’s is extremely well built and solid and has a 5 year warranty. It may not have the performance of the top NUC but its no slouch.
upsampling to dsd512 would be my most CPU intensive use case. no multi zones, filters, etc. should be able to handle that?
Not sure how well it would cope with DSD 512 if I am honest, I upsample to DSD128 as its all my hardware supports and its clocked at 3x using the one core from 44.1 I get no issues and everthing is still as snappy… I imagine DSD512 is pretty punishing on a cpu though and it might top this out.
Dare I say it, could it could be expectation bias? :). Also, when we are trying something new, we tend to focus deeper into the sound, which can lead to the perception of improvement. A blind test could reveal differences if any, but I guess thats controversial in audiophile circles :). I guess if you are happy with it and enjoying the sound, thats all that matters!
Probably ok as long as you turn on Parallelize Sigma Delta Modulator.
Possibly but I didn’t upgrade it to improve sq nor was I expecting it to do anything at all. I just wanted something with more ooomph than the previous one I had and it to be silent I had no expectations it would change anything at all. So it had quite the opposite effect.
It’s a very interesting report Simon, given the network connection. What are you using as network endpoint ?
I use a dedicated i7 server in another room for Roon, running Windows 10. It has an AIO water cooler with a push-pull fan for CPU cooling and I leave the sides off the micro-ITX case. I also run a GPU to assist HQ Player. So it’s quite a “dirty” source although it runs pretty cool. None of which has ever really bothered me because it all gets sent via Ethernet to a microRendu with an UltraCaps PSU, being a reasonably “clean” renderer. And after all, bits over Ethernet are just bits … aren’t they ?
Whatever the answer may be, I have developed the following prejudices:
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Human ears can discern differences that test instruments miss, probably because we are not measuring everything our audio processing wetware can do;
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Empirical evidence is more persuasive than appeals to authority;
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Ideal circuits or components exist only on blackboards. In the real world it’s all about engineering compromises within tolerances.
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I use Naim Atom as my main Zone which is connected via ethernet. I did move the server location to so maybe that played a part as it was now connected to the same switch as the hifi and not direct to the router. What ever caused it I’m not complaining but was very surprised.
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Test instruments can’t ‘miss’ anything. Their operators can.
This article describes how testing has developed over time. I don’t think we’ve reached the end of the road.