Mac Mini M1 Help

Aren’t you the poster who spent $600 to repair a port on the Nucleus?

Now, you want to go to a Mini? Nucleus still giving you trouble?

What you hope to accomplish?

How do you control a Mac Mini M1 with a Windows 10 PC? Seems like a Mac Mini would be a good device to run Roon, Audirvana, and Apple Music lossless high res all on one device.

No not me. I was quoted that price for repair. But opted against it. Made little sense that the issue is an loose Ethernet port. When its working i can literally yank the cord without a disruption.

The issue is that Nucleus powers down. Sometimes i can go 2-3 months with uninterrupted service, other times it powers down after every 3 hours

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You don’t need that hassle. Good luck.

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I run Roon on a 2014 Mac mini Intel Dual Core i5 with 8GB RAM. It’s way more than adequate even with running room correction DSP. A modern M1 Mac mini is way more powerful.

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Simple to install, usual drag and drop to applications. I have a mini M1 but upgraded to maxim ram just in case. I did notice that if you buy a Mac going full specs it is adding some years of life. But I have a problem with the usb A ports. Had a zen dac now a CA 200M, on mqas there are dropouts, never when using ethernet, jut when going USB from the M1 mini to Dac. With zen dac it was so often that I switched to Roon decoding, with CA 200M it is better, maybe once after 5 hours of a m4a playlist. I’m not the only one: MQA settings on Roon - iFi Zen Dac V2 - #77 by CvK
On network it works ok, 3 volumio endpoints with Roon bridge plugin and 3 airports. Sometimes all of them are running simultaneously with no problems.

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I back up my database to Dropbox nightly. Moving from one core to another is as simple as starting up the new core, selecting restore database … :man_shrugging:

Does that also move your local library?

Database I think is just the metadata in Roon, maybe that is called library. The local files maybe are also called library… It gets confusing. The photo Raw library/editing software also work this way. And all the video editing software works that way doe to the large files. The database is just metadata, info, keywords, links… The actual files are stored in another location. On an external drive or a NAS. For the moment my Roon has just tidal so nothing stored locally, I do not know how you manage those, at the same time, from the Roon app, or other ways. But I imagine the worst case scenario: the links can be broken between database and files, but I hope that reconnecting is simple (as it is on any video editing app)
Just do 2 backups every single step

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It does not. The database is the metadata collected by Roon relating to your music files, playlists, radio stations, etc. The music files are entirely separate. The best advice you’ve received here is to to move the music files from the Nucleus to an external hard drive and to back up then restore the database before moving the Core to a new computer.

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No, you have to copy your local music files to your new Roon core device if that’s where you want them. Do you have them stored on a hard drive or computer somewhere besides your Nucleus? It might be easier to copy them from there.

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Can you do that inside Roon?

No. You’ll need to ask someone from Roon support. Though I think it should be possible with a Mac or PC and the following method which describes copying files to a Nucleus, just reversing the process to mount the Nucleus drive over the network and copy to an attached USB drive on the Mac or PC.

SMB Connection (Alternate Option)

You can copy music to this drive by visiting the network share:

  1. From a Windows PC

  2. Open File Explorer

  3. Enter \NUCLEUS\Data\Storage\InternalStorage

  4. If you have issues connecting, please see this article for additional help

  5. From a Mac

  6. Open Finder

  7. Press Command + K

  8. Enter smb://NUCLEUS/Data/Storage/InternalStorage

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As others have said, Dropbox only backs up your database. I keep my music files on a NAS on my network, so moving from one core to another is quite simple - just point your new core to the network share.

Sorry, I assumed you were only wanting to migrate your database

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Thanks

A way to do that from within Roon would be nice. I use animation production apps that can do that. Copy the linked files from a location to another and also they can do transcoding, duplicates of the original to have multiple versions, a big rez file for colour correction and a small one for video editing on a laptop on the go.

Yes, After Effects, and DaVinci, FCP etc. can all do this but Roon is not set up for it.

Maybe it will come :slight_smile:

Yes. I believe i have the original external HD that was initially connected to my Mac pre Nucleus .

Well, there you go. Plug it into your new Mac Mini and you’re done. Copy the files to the Mac Mini if you want to.

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Thanks. Still deciding between the Mini And the SonicTransporter. I just dont want to be stuck with another appliance with one purpose(Ie Nucleus).