Are Roon considering memory play of the now playing queue? As more and more ‘computers’, even within ‘endpoint’ hardware, now use SSD rather than spinning disks, it is a feature that may be very worthwhile.
I have found this to be beneficial on Audirvana +2 that I was using previously, i.e. tracks are loaded in their entirety onto the SSD of my MacMini and played from there, rather than the usual injection throughout play that one has when spinning hard disks are involved.
How exactly would this be “benificial”?
Spinning hard disks are inherently ‘noisy’. Many of the top streamers are now employing SSD in their route to replay music.
If you’re convinced you hear differences don’t play directly from the core to your DAC, add an endpoint with all your requisite paraphernalia to the chain just ahead of your DAC.
Sorry, you seemed to have missed what I said. I already have MacMini, I already have SSD, I had Audirvana, now I use Roon. I am asking whether Roon are considering memory play. It works very well with A+2 on a Mac. Why do I have to buy an endpoint?
Nope, I understood you. I was suggesting an endpoint on which you could also run Roon so that the Roon core can read from disk and send the audio stream to the endpoint also running Roon but voila, no disk involved…memory playback.
We have no trouble with the idea of Audirvana-style memory play, and we’ll probably implement it at some point.
@audiomuze is right too–decoupling the endpoint from the media server is a more complete solution to getting the audio away from the computer stuff. Right now, Roon remotes help you accomplish this, but that’s sort of a stopgap in our view. RoonSpeakers is the longer-term solution to this problem, particularly hardware implementations of RoonSpeakers.
Don’t worry I do ‘get’ the endpoint solution as well, and I am looking forward to the hardware hook-ups with Roon that are just around the corner. I actually have a way of doing this now using Devialet Air from my MacBook, but I actually prefer USB between MacMini & Devialet to Devialet Air. I need to read more about RoonSpeakers, is this an ‘airplay’ or ‘connect’ type solution?
Products like Aurender and Melco are actually bringing the ‘computer’ back to the system with direct connections, albeit with highly optimised builds, one of which is the use of SSD’s rather than HDD’s. Aurender uses memory play via SSD. Since Roon is primarily Mac / PC at this time, memory play would be a useful feature now whilst we wait for RoonSpeakers.
I want memory play too. Even Vox (a free app) has it.
Is there a RAM model and spec that sounds better than others?
+1 (and it would be interesting to see how much of a difference it makes in Roon)
You could probably test this by setting up a RAM disk and copy an album into it, and then let Roon play from there, without Roon changes…
This should help with the discussion.(Follow the link.)