Yes agreed, thank you for that advice
Just my .02 cents, but considering it was essentially turnkey, and the M1 is in my opinion future proof for a while (itās really fast), I didnāt think $699 was overkill. To get an i7 NUC Iād have spent at least that much and of course a lot more for a Nucleus.
Every person has their inner geek level theyāll want to achieve, but for me spending $699 for this kind of performance and 15 minutes of setup to have it ājust workā was quite appealing.
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Itās a good word. I didnāt intend to communicate one should restore the whole enchilada when dealing with Roon on a Mac. TM is only useful here for the music files, so let the reader beware.
Thanks Charles! Trying to Finalize Mac Mini M1, Intel NUC, or the Small Green Computer Sonic Transporter with the Micro Rendu. Just trying to sort out communicating with the VSSL distribution amp that levels are controlled with Airplay.
I wouldnāt feel confident commenting on running that many zones esp with AirPlay involved. Based on the benchmarks, the M1 would handle that as well as any CPU, but, as mentioned previously, other configurations such as ROCK on a NUC donāt have as much overhead as MacOS.
Obviously when in doubt and if budget allows, overspec.
Considering Iāve got probably about $4k plopped into my Mac Pro (considering upgrades and base price in 2013) $699 is a downright bargain imo. Iām looking at an Apple refurb M1 Mini with 16gb and 1tb SSD for $1099 which still isnāt bad considering what one used to get for that. Tech marches onā¦
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Add me to the list of satisfied M1 Mac Mini owners.
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Just new to Roon and I run it over my basic M1 8gb 256SSD. My lib is rather small: 2100 albums / 35k files (mix of ALAC / FLAC majority 16bit some 24, also about 50 DSD files) stored on a network drive.
Memory activity during Roon indexing and streaming to 2 devices (same zone) over airplay of a DSD64 (just for the purpose of the test) is the same as doing 16bit ALAC and clocks around 5,5gb. Using DSP Headroom management and Parametric EQ.
When streaming a second DSD64 to Node 2i (RAAT) only EQ in a different zone, memory usage jumps to just under 6gb.
Just to show memory for me -the simple user- on the basic M1 works as advertised without memory swapping on local network stored music, I donāt use Tidal so canāt comment on impact in memory.
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Thatās good news about the M1, thanks. What about fan noise? Is there any, and if so how close do you need to be to hear it?
I have NO fan noise; for the purpose of test; I had Roon indexing, streaming RAAT and airplay in 2 different zones ā¦ nothing.
When I hold my ear against the Mac miniās body I hear some resonance; but move away 1 cm and nothing anymore.
Quiet as a mouse.
Note: in my set up the Mac mini is no endpoint; everything gets streamed over ethernet and meshed wifi through the house.
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Same here. Fan noise is non existent. Itās either not there or so quiet I canāt hear it.
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Thanks everyone. It is really good to know that the M1 is a viable possibility,
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Iām using mine as a normal desktop computer with a monitor and keyboard, running my home office (4K webcam + Microphone) over WiFi.
No problems with running Roon server simultaneously with all that so far.
Got the actual music files on a Naim UnitiServe connected via WiFi plus an iTunes library on a USB C Samsung SSD.
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I had the screensaver annoyance a few times when I first had my M1, and a problem with Time Machime not running if I logged into a second user, but they both seem to be fixed now.
Is there a way to prevent swapping? My setup is a Synology for the 118k files and a Mac mini for the core.
I would like to replace the 2012 mini for a M1 mini but with the cheapest version unless we expect performance or lifetime of the M1 (8gb) to fall short. On the other hand, we could use an external ThunderBolt-drive if the internal drive would fail at some point, right?
I see my MacBook Pro M1 swap a lot. But thatās my workhorse and 8 gb is by far not enough.
The mini would be more focused on Roon or some light browsing.
8gb is not enough if you ask me for a roon core on a rather busy/big os like Big Sur plus sharing graphics ram too.
May depend what else youāre doing with it, those M1ās are supposed to be pretty impressive with just 8gb, though Iāve never used one.
I have and 8gb didnāt cut it for a larger roon database of over 250k tracks
Good to know.