Mac Mini for Roon?

Ironman · June 9, 2019, 2:24am

This is clever. I think I have this issue. Will try gpu dongle. Thanks for the solution.

guy_seide · October 2, 2019, 4:50pm

Question how do I begin this set up for my 2010 Mac mini ? Also I upgraded my ram but is a ssd mandatory ?

Grump · October 2, 2019, 5:44pm

Hi @guy_seide, I would indeed start with SSD. It’s not for your (local) music, but for Roon itself. Without SSD, my experience is it works very sluggish, especially on a “vintage” Mac .

I use external HDD’s (via USB) for my local music files and would advise to keep things as simple as possible. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Grump · October 3, 2019, 5:08pm

@guy_seide, a question before you buy some SSD: you only mention one Mac mini. Do you plan to make it your core as well? In that case it may be slow even with SSD, depending on the size of your library. I used mine only as an endpoint (with Roon Bridge) and a faster Mac mini as the core (with Roon Server).

Sunrise · October 3, 2019, 9:55pm

A 2010 Mac Mini sounds too old to get an excellent user experience. Maybe buy a more recent, secondhand Mini with SSD.
A SSD is absolutely necessary.

Stephen_Blatherwick · October 4, 2019, 8:16am

I have a Late 2012 Mac Mini 2.5GHz i5 with 16gb Ram and it runs Roon core and my Plex server flawlessly. I’ve found no need to swap out for a SSD.

Mike_Rife · October 5, 2019, 3:30pm

An SSD is nice, but nowhere near “absolutely necessary”.

Henry_McLeod · October 5, 2019, 3:32pm

Well it isn’t supported without one so, I’d say it was necessary.

Mike_Rife · October 5, 2019, 7:40pm

So, if the OS is no longer supported, how will a SSD change the situation?

Henry_McLeod · October 5, 2019, 8:51pm

Obviously I am talking about support for Roon from Roon.

QuinnT · October 6, 2019, 3:15am

Not true IMHO.

Henry_McLeod · October 6, 2019, 5:14am

Fair enough. I would recommend one none the less.

Tom_K · October 6, 2019, 11:37am

I have a late 2014 Mini with the fusion drive.
It has served me well in getting started with Roon.

iamoneagain · October 6, 2019, 1:12pm

I picked up a cheap late 2014 Mac mini on eBay. Created an external ssd boot drive. It seems to run pretty fast. I just got the most basic model because I don’t use any of the upsampling features. Specifically got the late 2014 model because it can output 192/24 thru the optical out, which is best for Chord dacs.

Earl_Page · October 6, 2019, 5:10pm

I am running Roon thru my Mac mini 2017 year model with a external 4 tb hard drive. Roon has worked great with it .

Dan_Brown · October 6, 2019, 11:22pm

I’m running a 2012 Mac mini i7 with a 1TB spinning disk. It works no problem at all. It would be faster with an ssd, but it doesn’t seem sluggish at all so I haven’t felt the need to upgrade yet.

John_Sostaric · October 25, 2019, 2:46pm

no apple - to complicated for Roon coders

Paul_Jeno · October 28, 2019, 12:39am

I have an i7 Mac Mini 2018 with a 1 TB SSD running Roon into a USBridge Sig. Works like a charm! However, I had to transfer my library to the internal SSD because of Catalina. Since then, I decided to set up a NUC running Rock to become independent of problems caused by Mac OS upgrades.

adamus · November 2, 2019, 10:57am

€2200 ?? Nuc, 2TB ssd, sharkoon quickport = €750 Difference is 1500…

Rockhound · November 2, 2019, 11:08pm

I run Roon Core on a headless 2018 i5 Mac Mini with 256 GB SSD. Library is on a Synology NAS and everything is connected via ethernet to a Sonore ultraRendu. Works flawlessly.