iMac “Core i5” 2.5 21.5-Inch (Mid-2011) - from the MAC Upgrades site after entering my serial number
RAM: 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
I agree that adding some extra SSD and RAM will super charge my MAC for the other applications - but all we really use it for is emails and kids you tube anyway.
Really need to know if Roon Core will work as is… (haven’t heard anything to say that it won’t)… yet!! If i can get away with forking out a couple of hundred £ for SSD and RAM then I will!
It feels like the answer to most “will it work?” questions is going to be “It’ll work, but it won’t be as good as it could be”, because lets be honest, no-one is going to wonder whether a Mac Pro works flawlessly or not.
Flash/SSD storage is a big win. The metadata and artwork databases I was talking about are sitting in your home directory on your boot drive. If you have a small amount of music (lets say, less than about 1500 albums), it barely matters, but as your collection creeps up towards 5,000 or 10,000 albums or more, storage performance begins to matter a lot.
Just bite the bullet and get a NUC 7i5. Considering the expense you’ve put into the gear, and ROON, your server is the heart - it’s what makes it all work, and the NUC is practically a bargain. Don’t try and skimp or cut corners there or make do. You’ll be happier in the long run.
Its below the recommended spec for CPU (i3 Ivy Bridge) and without SSD you will not get the best use experience.
Try it by all means… but as noted as your database grows it will get slower for searching etc… music analysis could take a long time and DSP options will be very limited with that CPU and limited cores.
MQA files are compatible with RedBook CD / PCM streams, so yes.
However, at present Roon does not decode (unfold) MQA so unless your endpoints can, you will only be able to listen to standard rate resolution from MQA.
That said, once Roon can decode MQA [it’s on the roadmap] your Airplay devices won’t be able to take full advantage as Airplay is limited to only x1 rate.
You will be able to play MQA files, including TIDAL Masters, on all your devices through Roon. But the resolution will be limited by the connection protocol and the device’s capabilities. AirPlay has limited resolution. RAAT doesn’t. If you use AirPlay to connect, then the device will receive only a 44.1/48 kHz signal, no matter what other resolutions the MQA file has encoded within it. In that case you will need an MQA capable device to unfold it if you want the higher resolution.
If you use RAAT to connect, then (in future) Roon will do a first unfold and send a 88.2/96 kHz signal to all devices. Any MQA capable device can then render that to any higher resolution encoded in the file.
Are the Atoms the same thing as the Uniti Atom ? If so they are Roon Ready and will be able to receive an 88.2/96 kHz signal from Roon after it performs a first unfold of an MQA file. They don’t appear to have any MQA decoding or rendering functionality themselves, so first unfold through Roon is it.
Have just gone in this morning to try and now roon has lost the links to all my devices that i was trying last night. No Naim, No B&W zepplin, no yamaha amp (airplay). Just the computer speakers are under the output menu
