Lightweight setup on the road

Roon Software Discussion
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I’m retired and travel 6 months of the year, at home I have a dedicated MacBook Pro for Roon and I’m planning to upgrade to Nucleus or dedicated NUC with ROCK.
I have a large library of approx 40,000 albums and I’ve recently found that travelling and using Roon on my 2017 2.9 i7 MacBook Pro with 16 GB of memory is becoming difficult if not impossible.
I listen to music through Roon with my Mac and a Bluetooth speaker. Recently Roon stops playing music, skipping songs halfway through and is generally has become a pain to use. I’ve had to revert to Itunes, YouTube or Tidal. Can anyone recommend a compact lightweight piece of hardware that would connect with my hard drive, loudspeaker and Roon when travelling? I already travel with my laptop, Ipad and iPhone and so I’d prefer something small and lightweight. Any suggestions?

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Hi Paul.

I recently decided to go a different route and am extremely pleased with my system.

I was using tidal/qobuz on and off and constantly disappointed with the lack of more obscure titles in my HDD collection in either service. Taking the problem in hand I have now uploaded all my 13000 albums to an unlimited Dropbox account and use an android app called Cloudplayer which allows me to basically have my own personal streaming service. Because it’s in the cloud and not a DNLA system it’s not reliant on my pc being on or good home internet connection, and Cloudplayer works like a champ at least with the 13k albums I have. It takes a long time to do initial indexing, like several days, which is the only downfall and it’s not that nice to use when indexing (like the page keeps refreshing and sending you back to the same spot in browse views). I think there are Ios alternatives (Cloud Music Player springs to mind).

Of course you have to pay quite a bit for the unlimited Dropbox (I pay around 60eur a month), but since getting it, it’s been my sole on the go playing source. Now I use Roon for the home and Cloudplayer on the go.

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Hi Sallah,

thanks for your suggestion, I’ll look into it after i’m home.

cheers

Paul

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I use a Nuc 7i5 with a wd passport 4tb drive (not ssd) running rock. It works perfect. I use iem’s on the road but i take the sonore microrendu with me as well (you can just do usb out of the nuc). The router is a cradlepoint but any internet connection will work obviously and the dac is a chord h2 (most dacs will work). Part of the problem may be your bluetooth speaker. Last night I hooked up a google chromecast audio device to my bluetooth speaker via 3.5mm hardwired connection and it worked and was a very inexpensive endpoint for roon. Easy to carry around if you need to as well. Maybe some ideas anyway. I love taking roon and my music collection with me.