Mac Mini M2 Pro as Core - WOW

Roon Software Discussion
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I took the plunge and it delivered. This has 10 Cores, 16Gb, 512SSD and using a WD Black 8TB USB Gaming Drive for music storage. Wow. What a difference in play back speed, responsiveness, overall experience. My 2011 mini wasn’t up for the 130K tracks. It is way over what’s needed but I’ll be taking advantage of the extra horsepower to do some video work, etc, remotely as I use it headless in a utility room away from everything. With an iMac 5K monitor, the resolution via screen sharing is fantastic.

That said, Roon has crashed a bit on the latest release when importing or changing/grouping some albums. Over all, during playback, it’s been great. Moving files from mac to mac is just too easy. And the extra compute power meant I could keep my 2017 iMac and use the M2 for the way overdue family video work I need to get done.

Good stuff.

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I am considering getting a M2 Mac Mini to replace my 2014 Mac mini. How is the speed of the app (remote) also are you running the server?

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I am probably being super dim here but why would you want or need screen sharing for roon?

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Now all your music sounds like a 33 rpm record played back at 45 rpm?? :rofl:

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Exactly! Now I can get through more albums in one sitting…

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The M2 is running headless as a Roon Server. The app is massively faster on everything - iPad, iMac, iPhone. I think Roon does a lot to processing, etc and it really needs faster HW. It was frustrating that Spotify and Pandora were nearly instant and here I am in my own home waiting. Not now - it’s instant.

Also, I am running iStatistica Pro and the M2 is running easy, with a low load and processing DSD is as fast as anything else.

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I upgraded my 2014 Mac Mini with an SSD and I have Roon server. I do have it connected to a monitor but I turn it off after I login. Did you 2011 Mac mini have an SSD?

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Screen sharing lets me move files to the mac mini, which is headless. It’s also on the other side of the house and in the basement utility room. I reboot it remotely, which Roon seems to need from time to time, and use it’s extra processing power for other things I’m doing. It’s just so much faster than my 2017 imac. Overall, the return on the cost was worth it for the Roon experience I’ve been wanting for years and years.

I am not a NUC guy so this was the best choice.

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How do you enable screen sharing? Yeah I am a Mac Mini person. For the price of a NUC you can get a M2 Mac mini, that’s why I settled on this path.

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Well thats one way to do it, but you really don’t need screen sharing to move files about, its what networks are for.

On mac goto settings and sharing and turn on file sharing. It will now appear in your finder side bar on other macs or under network on PCs.

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I’m on a M1 mini, only Roon no other apps, all osx stuff shut down. I found a reboot of the roon app is welcomed every week (usually when I do a lot and fast tidal library management it hangs) and the mini is happy rebooted at 3 weeks or so.
How often do you reboot Roon Server app?

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Also love using a Mac Mini M2 Pro as Core as well. Been using Synology NAS as a source for music library (174k tracks of mostly CD and Hi-Res quality) but I feel like it makes the file loading sluggish some time. Plus, the folder is not being watched in real-time in comparison to if I were to hook an external hard drive onto the Mac Mini. Anyone else have any tips or preferences?

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I run Roon Server on a headless Mac Mini M1 with ethernet connection, and Roon on an M2 laptop over WiFi. My only source is a Qobuz subscription. I use an Asus ZenWiFi AX mesh wifi system.

I find the system generally unstable. The Server appears to degrade over time and often I will find in the morning that it has crashed. Both the server and the app appear incapable of retaining connection to my audio devices, displaying no available output devices. Playback is occasionally intermittent.

The advice I have on here is to delete the apps and reinstall them. Most of the time, I just use Qobuz over its own app and relegate Roon to an expensive curiosity.

I realise there are many variables and the fact that it is running on Apple silicon is not decisive. But that’s my experience.

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While my room server on m1 mini does feel happy after a reboot once in a week, I never experienced something that bad as you describe. Maybe you just need to find that variable that is causing you pain.

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I turn mine off when I’m finished listening. Then on when I was to listen again. Too scared to keep computers running. Well for Arc usage I have to use VPN (since I can’t port forward) so really can’t keep it on.

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Are you running the Roon server app with no UI on the M1 Mac mini? You should if you are not. I run Roon and HQPlayer Desktop on my my M1 Mac mini and it never has problems. It just runs and runs….

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I don’t get this one. Can you elaborate?

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Same here… along with Plex and zfs, which is why my memory usage is a little high. But the one thing MacOS is good with is memory allocation.

I haven’t restarted in almost 2 weeks. :crazy_face:

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I have Roon on a m1 Mac mini with 16G, 256g internal disk, with a thunderbolt 4 hub with internal SSD’s and m.2 nvme drive to hold my music and data. Solid state doesn’t improve the sound during playback but when I click the play or shuffle button, there is no delay which I like.
I have not had any issues running on a m1 Mac mini