This is my first posting so please forgive me for any apparent ignorance.
I have been running Roon core on a home-built computer for more than a year, and it appears to run fine. The computer is based on an Intel 2800mt board (an Intel Atom based processor hard wired onto the motherboard) with 4GB RAM, and a small ssd drive for the OS software. A 32 bit version of Windows 10 professional is installed, and it is a dedicated server for Roon, although I use Fidelizer to minimise the Windows processing load. The computer is connected to a PS Audio Bridge II Directstream DAC via Ethernet. The control point is an IPad. My music files are stored on an ancient Qnap single drive NAS. As far as I know Roon is making no changes to the files served to the DAC (upsampling etc), and nor do I want it to; any processing is done at the endpoint. I have a small music library - about 700-800 albums.
The reason I use the described computer is because I was previously using JRiver which runs happily on a low-powered computer.
Everything I read about Roon suggests I should be using a much more powerful server - at least an Intel i3 based machine, which makes me wonder if I’m missing out on any of the features offered by the Roon software.
Is there anyone out there who can advise if I’m likely to be missing out on any Roon functionality? The only possible fault with my system that may be linked to the low powered server is that when I select an album to play, there is a pause of a couple of seconds before the music starts - not something that worries me.
The several second pause – after pressing play but before music starts playing – probably is not due to your low specification Roon core. Rather, the delay likely is caused by the time needed for Roon to wake your NAS and/or for the upsampling filter to build in the PS Audio Bridge II. If so, moving to at least a minimum specification Roon core would not eliminate the aforementioned playback latency, though it could make all around Roon navigation more snappy.
DSP operations will be limited by the hardware you have, upsampling and filters will be the biggest burden, but if you have no need to use those then perhaps the only other thing that might be slow is your searching if you add more data to your library, including tidal tracks.
I don’t think you’re missing out out anything (leaving aside DSP). The latency sounds like it might be curable as set out above. The main thing I would say to anyone thinking of the same is that it may limit your library size, use of Tidal or similar services or future developments in Roon.
Thanks to all who have responded. My take is - as Daniel mentions, that if I’m happy to continue using Roon the way I have been, then there is no need to do anything, but if I want to take advantage of using Roon to do the “heavy lifting” as Evan suggests, then I should be looking at a new server build.
I’m grateful for the insights you’ve all shared
I would’n recommend any up-sampling outside of the DirectStream DAC.
The DS will up-sample everything that comes in to 20 x DSD rate, regardless what you do before. The FPGA won’t do less work and you can’t send 20 x DSD rate into the DAC to by-pass this internal up-sampling anyway.
I would recommend you let Ted Smith’s maths do all the up-sampling with the DS.
As per Brian here: “The DACs that are perhaps least suited to software-based upsampling are like the one we’re discussing in this thread. PS Audio has put considerable effort into developing an DSP scheme matched to their hardware. And more importantly, they engineered that scheme to go all the way from source material to analog.”
But of course if up-sampling to the DS via Roon sounds better, then it doesn’t matter what anyone says or thinks - do what sounds best to your ears and enjoy the music.
If you have a spare SSD you could try putting ROCK on your board. It frees you from maintenance of Windows 10 and aftermarket optimisers and boots in seconds. Back up and restore to your new application and it will simply mirror what you had on your other drive. If it doesn’t work you can just revert to Windows.
Caveat, it won’t be a supported setup, there is the potential for future updates to break it assuming it works.
If you power up every song, look at that spike! You are saving some by powering down long term but it’s not much… With modern drives it might be a few watts/he.
Sleeping the whole machine is a different story… CPU is per hungry.
It isn’t, and like I think I stated it isn’t supported and may break in the future. But it works on my Atom powered device at present and I am building a streamer around it. DE3815TYBE.
