Here is talking about how snappy the remote app feels. The actual playback can’t be faster…
I too have Synology and agree it’s sluggish. I’m using a WD_BLACK 8TB Gaming HDD - USB. Turned off put drives to sleep when able and it’s nearly instant playback.
Yes. The app is snappy and time-to-playback is highly responsive.
It’s all 1’s and 0’s so the storage medium won’t matter. Just how responsive it is. I like Apple
silicon.
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It’s how quickly the app responds and the music starts to playback. My old Mini took a long time to play a selected track. Now I can jump around to any track and it’s almost instant playback.
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At idle, the M2 only uses 7W of power
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I feel like when using Synology as a source for music library, playing music through Roon ARC while being outside the house is so much smoother than using external hard drive attached to the Mac Mini. But like you said, using external hard drive attached to the Mac Mini gives an instant music loading. I’m so torn…
I am doing other things on the mac so screen sharing is necessary. But yes, I agree it is also just a device. But the attached USB storage is something that has been a challenge in the past on a remote mac. I haven’t tried it again but will.
You would think so but you wouldn’t believe all the vendors that told me a certain hard disk or ssd changed the sound quality. Then I mentioned that I work for the largest hard drive/ssd manufacturer and they were full of sh$t because the drive they were using wasn’t made for quite sometime and they didn’t know it. Because if a hard drive had a specific name on it, that doesn’t mean they made it. Most techies knew who made what drives while the public/audio vendors didn’t have a clue
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What do you mean by “smoother”?
The music files being directly accessible to the Roon server via a locally attached drive can’t be worse than the Roon server accessing them from a Synology NAS. It could only be the same or better.
Oops smoother as in the loading time from when I hit play until the music actually start playing. It’s almost like the external hard drive going to sleep eventually once the Mac Mini goes idle while the NAS would run on low power so that’s why it is able to fetch the file faster.
Well, make sure the discs don’t go to sleep on the mini. There is a setting under “Settings->Energy Saver” to to turn off sleep. I also type this in terminal:
sudo pmset -a disksleep 1410065408
There are many things to turn off while using a Mac for a music server. Over A dozen years ago, audirvana recommended what processes to turn off/disable and I added more since.
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Want to share that list? Thanks.
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a couple of items I do are:
- use thunderbolt drives
- make sure TRIM is enabled on all solid state drives
- only run Time Machine when you aren’t playing music (use timemachineeditor)
- disable all processes that aren’t needed, for example spotlight indexing
- use APFS
If running Roon in a VM using Linux under vm virtualbox, there are many OS tuning steps that can be implemented. Since Roon runs natively on apple silicon, not sure if this buys you anything
Is any of that really necessary? I’m running Roon on a Mac mini M1, that I also use for everything else (Photoshop, web browsing, Excel, email, and so on), and even when the CPU usage ramps up I really can’t perceive any difference in SQ. I’ve also tried maxing out the CPU (via terminal) and it still makes no difference to SQ. I’m all for optimising the audio experience, but I’m not sure what you gain by lowering CPU usage when playing music. Sure, if you stress a CPU beyond it’s capabilities you’ll run into problems, but normal, everyday usage, even when pushing the envelope, doesn’t seem to make any real world difference.
most of what I put down impacts storage not cpu. I don’t want Time Machine running while I’m listening to music for example. Also, I don’t want garbage collection happening when listening to music.
When I used a 2012 Mac mini, the cpu was more taxed so these steps helped in that area too.
I used a hard disk for all my data even when I went to the m1, 8TB usb disk, and when I hit play/shuffle, there was a delay. When using TB and ssd in an attached hub, no delay.
Anyone did notice sound quality improvements when switching to the Mini M2 Pro?
I guess not but then again why not.
100% agree no SQ difference heard. Maybe gets a little faster? Not sure.
I’ve got one dac USB connected to m1 mini Roon Core as the only endpoint VS the same endpoint + HQP endpoint (CPU goes to 70% easily). Still I can hear no SQ difference on the USB dac but other people might hear.
only before a osx upgrade so I can roll back if goes wrong
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Of course not…
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