Mac Mini M1 fan experiences

Roon Software Discussion
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ROON uses their RAAT technology to transport the music (data!) to the ROON endpoint. RAAT is bit-perfect !
How could an additional peace of gear within the signal path have influence on RAAT ?
If there was an influence, in terms of modifying the datastream due to digital noise, RAAT would not be bit-perfect anymore!
Sure, digital noise is real, but cannot have influence to the data at this stage of the signal path.

…and since I’m the one who opended this thread, I’d like to remind us that the question was about the Mac Mini fan…

:face_with_monocle:

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63

I am not sure what is the issue with noise, it is normal
As for the M1 mac mini, I never heard the fans (my library has 350K + songs)

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Thank you! I am not well acquainted with my new Apple product, I appreciate the help.

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Couldn’t hear the fan noise on mine, 16GB RAM, even with LR, PS, Bridge and some browsers, etc open. That said, it was a dog for Lightroom and doing LOTS of memory swap, so just installed a MacBook Pro Max w/64GB RAM and 32 core GPU as my desktop (I use external monitors for printing). Holy Moly it smokes!

The Mini is totally fine and silent, but for Roon I think I’d rather run ROCK, as since 1.8 it’s been extremely stable on my NUC 7i5 in its Akasa case, and is dead simple to use and update.

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According to my research, the Mac Mini M1 is fanless. The iMac M1 has 1 or 2 fans depending on the model.

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That research is wrong:

2020-m1-mac-mini-unboxing-cooling-fan-connector
2020-m1-mac-mini-unboxing-cooling-fan-connector1400×933 125 KB

Both the M1 mini and the M1 MacBook Pro have fans – it’s rare to hear them though. Only the MacBook Air is fanless.

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LMAO, it better work perfectly, you are talking $50K in hardware alone there.

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I have been a Roon lifetime subscriber since July 2015. I have always run Roon Server (aka Roon Core) on a mac mini - first a 2009 one then a 2012 i7 quad-core mini with 16gb RAM and an SSD as system drive. This mini was dedicated to Roon alone, with a clean Catalina install.

For the last couple of years I have had woes with Roon - slow searches, slow playback start (even with local files) - all sorts of weird EXTREMELY annoying issues. I am pretty competent with computers but frankly could not figure this out. I run Activity Monitor and would check CPU usage when I had slowdowns - always below 20% on any one core, and overall below 5%.

I have ~250k tracks in my library and over the many years I have used Roon I have customized everything from duplicate album grouping to careful artist tagging to many other things.

Out of frustration, a few weeks ago I migrated to a NUC running ROCK (Roon Optimized Core Kit) (1). This is a slimmed down version of linux that only runs Roon Core. I restored the Roon db from my mini into the NUC.

So far this has transformed my Roon experience. Everything is essentially as fast as you would want it to be.

Now, you’re considering an M1 mini dedicated to running Roon Core. Yes the M1 is more powerful than the 2012 mini. But keep in mind that:
1- Roon is developed on Windows using .NET
2- For running on linux/mac it relies on .NET emulation libraries (at least this is my understanding)
3- Those libraries are at this point relatively optimal on linux, not so much on mac and definitely at this point not on M1-based macs

So my 2c would be: if you’re considering buying a machine to run Roon Core exclusively, do yourself a favor and get a NUC and put ROCK in it. The one case this would not be good is if you wanted to use HQPlayer with Roon. If you really did at some point you could put Windows on the NUC and run Roon on Windows.

I am a mac person - have many macs. I am also a linux person professionally and use Windows as well. My one and only bias is getting the right tool for the job.

(1) NUC config: NUC10i7FNH, 32gb RAM, 500gb m.2 SSD (ROCK, Roon, Roon db), 4TB internal SSD for files. This is overspec’ed for ROCK but wanted a machine I could easily install Windows on if I wanted.

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71

Have new(as of Dec 2021) M1 Mac mini with 16GB RAM and have never heard the fan or for that matter ever felt the case to even get warm to the touch—I use the M1 a lot EMR/searches/email/ all the while listening to TIDAL/Qobuz their respective desktop apps or with ROON or Audirvana Studio.
For that matter hardly ever heard the fan on my late 2012 i7 16GB RAM with 3 different irriterations of hard drives the last being Samsung SSD.
Also for that other thread about M1 and CPU/ RAM usage never happens to me and I check when using ROON and Audirvana Studio.

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I’m about to set up an M1 Mini as a Roon Server and move my current NUC-based Core to it. Out of curiosity what DAC do you have connected to your Mini? Is there anything special you had to do as far as the audio out from the Mini? I have a Schitt Modius connected to the NUC that I plan to connect to the M1 Mini. And down the line thinking of the Liberty DAC II. Thank you for sharing.

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I also have an M1 mini and have never heard the fan.

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I have never heard the fan and I running HQPlayer Desktop on the M1 Mac Mini as well as Roon Server.

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Also have a M1 MAC Mini and have never heard the fan as I sit less than 24" away…I have the Roon Core on that machine as well as all my other software and never hear it. I have 16MB RAM

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Hi. memory use and management with the M1 is different and yes all apps can utilize more RAM. But yes, if developers allow memory leak is a different story.

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I’m using a Schiit Yggdrasil “Less-is-More” version DAC. I had a Gungnir multibit before that and I liked it very much and was doubtful there’d be much difference but I decided to try it. It took about a week of it being on 24/7 but holy moly, it opened up and settled in beautifully. Probably the last component I’d ever consider trading in for something else. It can easily hang with some very pricey DACS. You don’t HAVE to do anything to the audio signal between the Mac and the DAC, it works just fine via one USB cable. In fact, the Mac is the only thing I’ve ever tried that actually can feed an audio signal to the Yggy via USB. I do have several ways that I’m processing/manipulating the signal both before it goes to the Mac and after, but that’s entirely optional and would be a fairly involved conversation.

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