Being an Apple fan myself I would never try to talk anyone out of buying a new toy. However, if you are really looking for an excuse to buy new Apple tech for Roon why not a MacBook Air? It’s a very similar price point to a 2024 13 inch IPad Pro and still spectacular looking and easy to carry.
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The power of the M4 chip is not the issue. You can buy a Nucleus for way less than a new iPad. It is a waste of an iPad to use as a Roon Server. IMO…
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Before making statements about workloads, wouldn’t be a bad idea to look at benchmarks(MSN)
Stick with a Nucleus one as Roon needs just a fraction of power that M4 can provide.
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M4 is a perfectly fine chip, Apple did not screw up ARM’s design too badly. That does not change the fact that iPad (neither hardware nor OS) is not designed for server workloads and attempting to port Roon server to it would be about as useful as designing umbrellas for fish, but significantly more frustrating.
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An iPad (with iPadOS) is unequivocally the wrong tool for the job of running a Roon Server. It has nothing to do with the ‘chip’ generation used. An M1 Mac Mini runs Roon Server without breaking a sweat.
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Plenty powerful but like others have said iPadOS is essentially an outdated iPhone. It can’t even hold an SSH connection, as iOS devices put software to sleep after a certain time. It essentially has been handicapped where it can’t even properly multi-task or run services in the background.
An M4 iPad is way more powerful than required for Roon server. The 1TB or 2TB model has 16 GB ram so would make it a good option.
Unfortunately the iPad pro since the first M1 iteration is a computer looking for an OS. If Apple ever caves to the demands of most iPad Pro users they will produce a touch enabled full macOS for the iPad Pro, alas they would not want to cannibalise sales of the MacBook Pro or Air so unlikely in the near term……
It’s plenty powerful enough. These things run Final Cut Pro with multiple 4K streams, they could easily do Roon server duties. More the question is why you would bother doing this vs getting a Mac mini and an HDMI dongle and running that headless.
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I keep hoping at some point Roon will add the ability to have “satellite” Roon servers synced to your primary Home, e.g. one for the car and one for the office. If so an iPad would be an excellent device.
It would work even without cellular connectivity. ARC is in any case incredibly brittle and unreliable.
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As many have stated, the hardware is PLENTY powerful enough - processor, thunderbolt, WIFI.
I, for one, would absolutely love to see this functionality in Roon – perhaps a version of Roon that only allows for connection to streaming services. I travel often and such ability would make me 10x more likely to use Roon daily. Streaming only would eliminate the need for an ARC/VPN tunnel to my home network (occasionally from WIFI networks I don’t control), and allow my iMac to deep sleep.
As an aside, has Roon commented on ARC’s vulnerability (or not) to the TunnelVision exploit?
[Moderator Note: Discussion split out to its own topic:
Has Roon commented on ARC’s vulnerability (or not) to the TunnelVision exploit?]
As many also have stated, it’s not server hardware though, and even more importantly, the OS on an iPad is quite explicitly made to not be appropriate for a server. Despite the CPU being quite powerful (but then, making a CPU better than Intel has historically been easier than taking candy from a baby) you will have better experience running Roon on a Pentium from 1995 than on any iPad.
You could use a MacBook for that anytime, about as expensive/portable but made for the task - case closed.
It’s a good idea for sure, but I don’t own one.
My biases/use case: I don’t have any local files that I integrate in my system. I use Roon for 1) music discovery purposes on top of my Qobuz subscription, and 2) when at home, I use RAAT to connect to a pair of Devialet Phantoms.
I’m an Apple main (iMac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone 15) so adding a MacBook to the mix is a bit spendy.
I’m sure my use case is a niche here, and that’s fine. I like that Roon has flexibility to service a range of users.
Bide your time, browsing by folder was explicitly ruled out yet we now have it.
Never say never.
You’re correct, and we agree that the iPadOS is ostensibly the major hurdle for using an iPad as a RoonCore. I should have stated that earlier.
I’m hopeful that a solution is possible. For example, when playing a song or podcast locally or with AirPlay, hitting the sleep button does not automatically end playback. With this in mind, I suspect it’s possible to have processes that do not terminate when the screen goes dark.
My intent isn’t to say it’s possible — I just wish that it was.
Totally agree that the architecture and use case of an iPad makes this a dumb idea for a Roon server.
But as to processing power the M4 is mind boggling. [Incredible Apple M4 benchmarks suggest it is the new single-core performance champ, beating Intel's Core i9-14900KS — results of 3,800+ posted | Tom's Hardware](https://See here.)
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It might be possible to hack something that runs as a rather limited imitation of a proper Roon Core on an iPad, but given thaty even Samsung’s resources are not infinite, IMHO it would be a much better use of them to get ARC working properly for more people, and then you would not really need to shoehorn a server onto a tablet…
What about people who don’t use or want ARC , I get the impression that ARC robbed the main Roon app of resources even if the ARC dev was a dedicated team.
There are so many outstanding feature requests/improvements etc that have been shelved for years.
Isn’t part of that ARC not working very well? And for those who do not need remote access at all, a castrated server on a tablet would not be very useful either…
And those, too. I’m just saying that any of those (and specifically ARC for the mentioned use case of listening to one’s collection or streaming subscriptions while on the go) would be far better use of Roon’s efforts than trying to stuff Core into a tablet.