Hi there, Mac OS is Unix underneath with a glorious UI, you can do basically anything that a Unix system can do. I don’t think on installing something else (I also have Linux) specific things like being able to use both Ethernet ports as one with a couple of clicks is what I appreciate from the apple platform.
I have a pet project to install proxmox on one of this Mac Pro’s but I need to find the time for it. It will make a nice virtual machine environment.
If you have more apple products like a laptop or a Mac mini I recommend to go Sonoma on the Mac Pro.
@Jaime_Soni Hi, I’m actually starting the project, but was wondering. MacPro can be upgraded up to Monterey. Can I just install Roon on Monterey? Is there additional benefit to use Sonoma using the Opencore patch? Wouldn’t running Sonoma rather overload the old CPU?
Hi, Monterey is OK I installed Sonoma to be up to date with the software in the rest of my house(also any new Roon updates will be based on the latest OS version), in my experience I have a 14K songs local library and 4 Roon end points plus my Mac mini, streaming to ALL devices including my PC (All with its own upsampling and parametric eq) does not put any stress in de Mac Pro the CPU utilization goes no more tan 12%. With single stream is less than 4%. So don’t worry about performance.
I bought a used Intel fibre server card and a couple of SFP+ OM3 LC modules and installed them in one of my NAS’ PCI slots. With both ports configured in an 802.3ad LAG, I’ve got a 20Gbit/s link to the main network switch.
Impressive, but for my needs the Mac Pro is a winner, also it is a beauty to display, its industrial design is al least for me incredible, it looks good even as an ornament piece.
I do have 802.3ad turned on, since it comes with dual 1Gb ports and my switch supports trunks, its not as fast as yours but really more than I need know for myself. BTW the CPU utilization has never gone to more than 12% with 5 streams to endpoints at the same time all with its own upsampling+DSP configuration, the ethernet throughput with this load has never come close to compromise the network. In short I`m happy with my setup, and if anyone needs help to replicate it, I´m here to help.
I’m certainly with you on not needing a Titan. It has its place for those who need an appliance, but for the technically savvy, it’s easy to build something with better performance for much less cost, but then again, the same could be said for many things.
I wouldn’t choose a Synology Rackstation for a Roon server, but as I already owned one, it was a sensible choice to put it to use. No matter how much video or audio I stream from it or how much DSP is implemented, I can’t make it break into a sweat.
Unlike a Nucleus though, it couldn’t exist in my listening room as it’s a noisy beast. It lives in my man cave out in the garden at the end of a 40 metre length of fibre optic. It also lacks the aesthetic appeal of the Mac trashcan!
I never got my Mac Mini to turn on its fan when it was running the Roon Server. And neither does my current M1 MacBook Pro. It sits happily in the living room. The only sound one can hear when its completely quiet is the soft whir of the connected USB powered hard drive which contains my local music library. Were I to replace it with an SSD it would be totally quiet.
The system is snappy and runs like a charm with 8 gb of RAM and a library size of 81204 tracks. Of which just over 62k are local files. The rest a mix of Qobuz and Tidal favorites.
My M1 MacBook Air is also doing great as Roon Server. No fan… uses not much power, external thunderbolt hub and NVME drive.
No fans and nothing that moves, while still having access to a solid Office PC that also doubles as ripping station for all my CDs, Blu-ray’s and 4K discs
But I also can’t afford a nucleus titan , so I might be biased there
In my opinion a Nucleus Titan is totally overpriced for what it offers. A Nucleus One is far more affordably priced. But it is still unavailable outside of the USA.
Yeah, but the One has a fan and since I have my Nucleus by my stereo, that’s a big nono for me.
The Titan is indeed overpriced but that goes for so much things in the audio world.
I’m also waiting for the Titan here in Europe, really silly it takes so long.
I know I shouldn’t get involved in this, but if it’s really overpriced it won’t sell. If it doesn’t sell either the price will drop or the vendor will go out of business. That’s capitalism. Is it really overpriced if the buyers are happy with their purchases and the vendor is making a profit? I was one of the original Nucleus buyers. Many on here criticized the Nucleus as an overpriced NUC. But it was a big seller and it expanded Roon’s market share. It was followed by Rev. B and now the Titan and Nucleus One. I was happy with my purchase and I’m sure many will be satisfied with the Titan. These concepts apply to everything in our hobby. Either the customers think the price is right and the vendor makes a profit, or the price is adjusted, or the product goes away.
I am having a problem with failed automatic backups that I never saw before: I can force a backup to a USB stick but at the next automatic backup, it says the backup failed: backup directory not available.
Can someone help me? the auto backup has worked for me for a long time.
I did install a new USB stick: same issue
A new USB stick (or preferably USB attached SSD) will be represented in the Nucleus files system as a different folder within Data/Storeage. Thus, when you change the USB storage device, you will need to change the scheduled backup path to match.
I did change the path of the new USB stick and was able to perform a manual backup: but the auto backup gives me the error
Could you recommend a USB SSD for backup?
SSDs are not really necessary for a backup, any USB HDD will work just find. I’ve never had an issue with my WD Passports or Elements Portable USB HDD drives.
I only mentioned USB SSD’s specifically because you referenced a USB stick which is also flash memory but with a very much simpler architecture. USB sticks are not a good choice because they wear quickly and can fail prematurely as a consequence. SSD’s are different.
As @Rugby suggests, USB attached HDDs are perfectly good from a performance point of view but if your Titan is in the listening room and your backup usb storage is permenantly attached (as it would likely be to use scheduled backups), you may want to use an SSD from acoustic and power consumption points of view (but even then acoustics may be irrelevant if the USB HDD powers down when idle - which most modern USB HDDs do) and you schedule the backup to occur when you are not in the room - say at night. The acoustics issue is more of a problem when the USB storage is used to hold local library media files.
For the USB SSD/HDDs, there are any number of off the shelf USB drives available. Any one of them would be good enough from a performance point of view. Just pick one from a brand that you trust.
Alternatively, you could just buy a 2.5in USB enclosure and a bare 2.5 in form factor SATA 3 SSD//HDD with whatever capacitty you felt necessary.
Ideally, a USB disk that you use for a scheduled database backup should be big enough to hold a good number of backups (say at least 10 - but maybe quite a bit more).
Regarding the scheduled backup error: The scheduled backup does not necessarily use the same backup location as the manual one. It has it’s own path in the backup schedule settings:
Note: My backup path will be different to yours because I backup to a network location.
You can test the scheduled backup manually using the ‘Force backup now’ option under the ‘three vertical dots’ menu to the right of the scheduled backup path:
Hi everybody,
the titan nucleus is now announced for EU. Delivery will begin in january 25.
Will there also come a trade in for the old nucleus?
Regards from Erhard
