Mark, perhaps this Help Center article on Roon’s architecture will help your understanding…
Think of the three components: Core, Control, and Output as Lego building blocks that can be assembled in multiple ways. You only need one Core, but you can have as many Control and Output blocks as you want.
If you go for the Nucleus or NUC/ROCK as the Core, then this would probably be best connected via USB to your Parasound. But the Dragonfly (as an output) could be plugged into your iMac or the Nucleus whichever is more convenient - or you could move it between the two as you wish.
Hello @Mark_Sealey – I agree that the material @Geoff_Coupe pointed you to would be a good resource.
I do think that those concepts are still tricky to wrap one’s head around – in part perhaps because there’s been different terminology used for them at different points (Roon Core vs Roon Server vs Roon app; Roon Control vs Roon Remote vs. Roon app vs. Roon Client; Roon Output vs. Roon Endpoint vs. Roon Zone). (Not criticizing anything/anyone – it’s just complex, IMO). It’s only after 1+ years of Roon that I feel I sort of understand those distinctions, but it would still be hard for me to write up something that reconciled all of that terminology.
But to your questions:
Yes, if by that you mean “I would be running only the Roon client (aka Remote aka Control) on the iMac, and the the resource-intensive Core would be running only on the NUC/Nucleus.”
What I meant was this: If you wanted to use Roon when not working at your computer, then your computer would need to be always on and always running Roon and always allowing Roon clients (“Remotes”/“Controls”) through the firewall. If it weren’t always in that state, you’d have to get it into that state in order to use Roon. But if you only ever use Roon when you are already working at your computer, then this is moot. Perhaps that is your scenario.
[And perhaps by “multi-room” you meant “using Roon from a different room than where the computer is” rather than “playing music via Roon to a different room than where the computer is”, which is what I meant (and I think is generally meant) by “multi-room”. In your sense of “multi-room”, yes, the relevance of a NUC/Nucleus is dependent on (your sense of) “multi-room” usage – there’s no need for NUC/Nucleus if you only use Roon when working at the computer running Roon; if you do want to do your sense of “multi-room” usage, then you could either leave your computer on all the time, with attendant overhead, or get a NUC/Nucleus “appliance”.]
Hope that made sense… I’m beginning to confuse myself now…
@otinkyad - much appreciated. All clear now, I think. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to go through these details at such length and so clearly.
Perhaps I’m lucky to have come in when I have at the time when only one set of terminology is current.
That is what I mean(t), and - when you put it like that - I can begin really to see the advantages. Like a dedicated (inevitably) CD player, self-standing and independent with its remote control.
That actually highlights the way my thinking has gone: originally it was CDs only because I like the idea of a physical object with its liner notes. But then I realized that my computer was a pretty good device to store and manage high resolution music on; except for its heavily-‘compromised’ in-built DAC circuitry. OK, I’ve got round that by using the Dragonfly and cutting out the Mac’s DAC by USB to the Parasound.
Now to hive off storage and management of music to another device (Nucleus etc) seems like a step backwards. And in terms of what I listen to (new, podcasts, YouTube, news etc), would force (at least encourage) me to have two places of control. I also use SoundSource to make the business of what inout goes to which listening device (Parasound, headphones etc) pretty seamless. I kind of like that.
Quite the opposite! I’m thinking aloud. The important thing is that - thanks to yours, Mike’s and Geoff’s guidance - I can see what does what, why and what the advantages are.
I think that you seem to be coming back to setting up your Roon Core on your Mac, and not going down the appliance route with a Nucleus. That’s fine, and also because of something that occurred to me, the Parasound P6 may not be able to connect to a Nucleus via USB.
I’ve looked in the specs and the user manual for the P6, but there’s no mention of being able to connect to a Linux-based computer using USB. Some older DAC products cannot do this.
I suspect that there’s not an issue, since (a) you’re able to use it with your Mac, which is a Unix-based computer, and (b) it uses the ESS ES9018 DAC chip, which is the same as used in my Quad Artera Link - and that quite happily connects via USB to Linux devices.
But, my advice would be - if you ever decide to go down the Nucleus (or NUC/ROCK) route in future - to first check with Parasound that the P6 will plug and play with it.
How useful and what a good ‘catch’. Thanks for taking the time to check the P6 specs.
It had never occurred to me that there would be such a mismatch/incompatibility. My iMac connects perfectly to the P6 via USB - although I did have to buy a cable with a ‘repeater’ because of the physical layout of my listening room. I was experiencing dropout and support at Parasound pointed me to that. I would certainly check USB connectivity, Nucleus to P6 first.
For the moment, in any case, I’m content to manage my collection on my iMac.
And I’m anxious to avoid having two sets of equipment. This works well. My main concern is to have adequate storage for what are, after all, space-hungry files which will only grow in number, of course .
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