John, you’re repeating a lot of surmise and innuendo as if it was established fact. Maybe the Roon guys recommend separation because of sound quality, but also maybe they recommend it because it cuts down on service complexity. The “thinking” may be as you say, but that’s pure surmise. And when David said that the USB ports on the Nucleus are not optimized for audio use, I don’t think it surprised anyone, because USB ports are used for data transmission, not for audio transmission. If the ZS has a “specially designed” quiet input port, well that’s great, because any port on a device purportedly for audio use should be designed to be “quiet”. Makes me wonder about the non-specially designed USB ports on other iFi devices, though.
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I must have misunderstood the guidance from roon when they said
Rule 1: Core and Output on separate devices
To get the best sound quality from Roon, plan for an ethernet cable between your Core and Output components. One way to accomplish this is with a Roon Ready hardware device.
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John it’s advice that many disagree with, and i was not saying it’s wrong (and still not) but many users on this site stream from their Nucs (both as Roon Core and Roon Bridge’s) and swear by it. I started that way before utilising one of my Pi’s that I had In the house as Roon is a journey for most of us.
After adding an Audioquest Jitterbug and buying a good Audioquest cinnamon cable there really was very little difference to my ears between the audio that came from my headphone amp at the time., Now my equipment at the time was not what it is now, so maybe that makes a difference, but both options are available.
I was also running my Roon Core in my living room as well at the time and have since moved it to my study.
So Roon give advice which is the aim for perfection but there is no problem playing with this and see what works for you in your situation, because as long as it works and you are happy with it there are no issues.
Hopefully that makes sense
This is a discussion that is held elsewhere but for a high level, the means used are not the same. We agree on the quality of ZenStream compared to other more expensive solutions.
This has a lot to do with the ability to control the input quality (ethernet) and output quality (USB).
In addition, the OS has its advantages (and disadvantages).
The advantages are its simplicity and lightness.
To get the same level on a pc or nuc, you have to introduce power management, USB and ethernet cards… it’s expensive (JCAT, Sotm, Taïko, HDPlex, etc).
Also for Roon and Roon Rock, there are already discussions about the .NET port and its possible consequences (differences between Roon Core windows vs Rock).
On a server, things like the OS, software interactions, latency have an impact. In the optimisation of my WIN10 LTSC, very clearly, the latency level is not limited to the absence of clicks but is also an indicator of the SQ level.
Connecting the dac directly to the PC has an advantage: it allows the use of a specific and more “sharp” driver than going through a generic linux version.
This advantage can positively influence the output level: direct DSD or higher stream via ASIO rather than via a generic audio driver.
But the disadvantages of a “dirty” environment are, for me, more important. Not to mention the cost of trying to control them.
I know… one bit is one bit but feeding a dac directly is a very sensitive thing.
Take any computer, even with an iSilencer and compare it to an ethernet connected ZenStream. Without going through Roon server + bridge, the intrinsic quality of the ZenStream is superior to the PC.
Compare a stream (Qobuz, Tidal) sent to the ZenStream connected to the dac and do the same with your PC also connected to the dac.
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The points that have made about USB output from a server I am very familiar with but as they’re not related to this ZS thread, I was just attempting to highlight to Steven why there is a disparity between your views on USB output and those of David. Nothing more.
When Steven asked (in this Zen Stream thread) about the Nucleus
what’s the optimal port to get the audio then? I’m not sure I get this thing. Can it act as a Roon server that I could stream to the ZS?
I pointed him to the guidance from Roon that (yes) streaming to a roon ready device (from Nucleus or whatever) is Roons recommended way to go. That’s principally why people have bought ZS devices and why are talking about them in this thread.
Related to USB output (and this thread) I made reference to the fact that the ZS has what they describe as “quiet” USB ports (I read on their site they describe a iFi’s Active Noise Cancelling technology to remove distortion from the audio signal.) as this is another ZS feature that I suspect may be key in people looking at using the ZS to stream to a ZS>USB>DAC to get the best of everything.
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Hi John it’s good to have your thoughts and comments, and I was only giving you my testing outputs
I agree that the Zen has quiet USB ports and that’s also backed up with other comments as well. I also think that you are right about the Zen->USB->DAC chain as that seems to be very common for higher resolution playback, but there are also a number of fans of the SPDIF output as well. Great option to have both available in that case
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yep, I use the ZS SPDIF output myself into my old Naim DAC and I do feel that the ZS output sounds better than the Pi w/ Digione HAT that I was using for several years (and which I moved to the study). However I got the ZS only a couple of weeks after I upgraded the amp to a Supernait 3.so that will have clouded my judgement “quite a bit”.
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Thank you, I had a misunderstanding of how the nucleus was meant to be utilized as a storage device. I’m accustomed to connecting digital music sources directly to my DAC for direct decoding, and I wasn’t considering the obvious solution the device offers as a non-PC based Roon Server.
Given that I already have a Roon Server running 24/7 as a background process on my iMAC, which is M1-based and very capable from a resources standpoint, buying a Nuc makes no sense to me. I have a 4TB SSD connected to my Mac via a thunderbolt cable, and it’s extremely fast—thus, unless I’m missing some additional feature the Nuc offers, I can burn my physical media to my SSD via an external optical drive and my network-attached desktop is performing all the functions a Nuc would offer anyway. Would you agree?
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Personally I think there is a limited audience for a Nucleus at that price as many are already using a PC/Mac or laptop that fits the needs and does everything most people want and you still get a working computer.
The beauty of a cheap dedicated pure Nuc is that it is cheap always on and relatively cheap to run and requires almost 0 effort to keep working. Pop it in a silent case and even better and a total cost of about $650 to $750 sent (unless you go higher spec).
I think the Mac mini could move into a similar category once they get the DotNet issues sorted and that would make an equally good Roon core for many.
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Anyone verify if the auto update setting works when in Roon only mode?
I’m not sure they are active yet, or maybe delayed from release.
Last time Steven updated us about an update, I had not had mine and switched it to AIO mode to get it.
Need someone with more patience than me sorry.
The firmware update feature at present seems to only work in AIO mode, although there hasn’t been a new release since 2.31.8 to test whether it can update automatically in Roon-exclusive mode. I am leaving my ZS in that mode for the time being to test your specific question, and as soon as iFi pushes out a new firmware release I’ll let you know what happens.
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There’s been new betas though right? I would think if the auto update worked in Roon only mode it wouldn’t matter what release channel you were on.
I’ve been out of town in corporate training since last Monday so the latest beta I know of is 2.31.8 (one after the last stable release). There might be new ones since then and when I return home on Friday, I’ll know soon enough if Auto Update worked, since I left my device in Roon Exclusive mode! 
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Thanks, that’ll be interesting.
Hi everyone,
Sorry if this has already been covered. I was interested in the Zen Stream when it first came out, but remember being disappointed when I found that the “Roon Ready” claim was a bit deceiving/untrue. Is this fully implemented now as originally claimed? Thanks!
Yes. But DSP volume is not yet supported
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What is that?
If you don’t use it, should not be a problem. 
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I use plenty of DSP features but I don’t understand what any of it has to do with Roon Ready certification.