I’m thinking of building an HTPC (Home Theater PC) to run Roon 1.3. I’d like ideas about doing that, “best practices,” if you will.
The HTPC would be running Win 10 Pro x64. The box would be some form of an Intel NUC (a small-form-factor computer), such as a NUC Kit NUC6i5SYH Mini PC. I would add memory (8 or 16 GB) to the kit as well as a 1TB (maybe 2TB) SSD. The kit has built-in network capability (wired and wireless).
The HTPC would connect via the network to a Classe CP-800 preamp. In the future, the HTPC might connect to an Antipodes DS Edge, which would connect to the preamp.
I tend to recommend 8GB RAM unless this machine will be doing something else in addition to hosting the Roon core. 16GB won’t hurt, but it won’t have any real benefit for a dedicated core.
I have lots of experience with the NUC6i5 boxes (mostly SYKs) and they’ve been rock-solid reliable for me. Good idea to update the BIOS upon receipt as the boxes I’ve received lately have still been at least two revs out-of-date.
Is your goal to store your music files in the NUC or using some external storage? No problem with either approach, but I can say that storing a modestly-sized library inside the NUC is appealing.
I have a few recommendations:
Take a look at ROCK (Roon Optimized Core Kit) as the operating system instead of Win10. If this is truly going to be a dedicated core and you don’t need display (user-interface) capabilities then this is an excellent option for you. I’ve been running Roon on Linux variants almost exclusively over the past 6 months and I wouldn’t go back to Windows or OSX for the core functions. ROCK is appealing as there’s no need for any ongoing maintenance or updates.
I’d recommend against WiFi connectivity for the core. Many customers have experienced odd issues that were completely resolved by going with wired ethernet.
Your plan for networked connectivity to your DAC/preamp is a good one. This is the best way to get the most out of Roon.
I’d intended “Roon” on this HTPC. What exactly is the difference between Core and Client? Is Client the control point, the software with the GUI? For that, I expect to be using an Android tablet.
hi Andrew, does it matter in your view if the music is stored outside the NUC on a NAS, or is there any benefit from a SQ standpoint in storing it on a SSD disk in the NUC?
I intend for my digital library (.flac tracks ripped from CDs, plus some downloads to .flac tracks) to reside on the NUC; that’s why I’m thinking 1TB or 2TB SSDs.
My library at the moment is about 310GB (about 1025 albums, mostly of about 1300 CD discs ripped to .flac files). I doubt I’ll more than double the library’s size in the future.
As for the question of 8TB versus 16TB: I have a vague idea of putting video into my library, so the larger amount of storage might come in handy. But in such a case, I don’t know if I would continue Roon on this HTPC (my TV is upstairs from where my audio equipment is and from where I’d place the HTPC for hosting Roon for audio).
From my experience it makes no difference in terms of sound quality.
Lately I’ve been using network-attached storage much more frequently with Roon and this is mostly due to convenience. To date the only issue that I’ve had has to do with new files being detected automatically on Linux, but this is an underlying OS issue rather than anything specific to Roon.
Given that, I highly recommend building up the NUC with a SSD for music storage and an M2.SATA stick for the OS and Roon database. It will be a killer little machine! Definitely worth investigating ROCK as you are a perfect candidate for it.
If you’re looking at having the box serve multiple functions then more RAM may be worth the modest investment. My preference is for dedicated Roon boxes, but there’s nothing about the software or architecture that requires that.