NUC (Rock) vs NAS

Im looking at changing over from a NAS with all my videos ,photos and 1000 FLAC albums onto a NUC with only my FLACS on running ROCK.
Could you tell me ,is this a better upgrade and what are the main differences between the two?
End point is a Cambridge Network Streamer

It is the best way to Run Roon from the perspective of ‘non-Roon’ elements having an impact on performance. Keep your network simple (my core is connected direct to my WiFi router) and you should be rewarded with a more responsive experience.

Thankyou for the reply,as you can tell im not really gemed up on NUCS.
Would this be an OK setup?
NUC 7i5BNH
Samsung 960 Evo SSDM2
8GB Memory,is this enough ?
Internal storage on NUC
2TB 2.5" SATA HD (spinning)not SSD
I have 1000 FLAC albums at present these take up 1.44TB on NAS but this will soon grow so the 2TB will soon fill.I cant see bigger HD for storage in NUC.
Do i add external HD later?

Keep your NAS with audio files in place. The 7i5 NUC with 8 mb ram and 64 gb m.2 ssd running ROCK. No spinning hard drive in NUC case will yield excellent results. That is how my setup works.

So really i dont need the H version of NUCs which has the section for a HD,i can get the slightly cheaper thinner version
So would be keeping NAS as storage only ?
How is your NAS connected to NUC? Is it USB or direct ? Does it really matter?
So could just use NAS or external HD connected to NUC using the USBs.
If im saving money on the NUC version ,is it worth upping to the i7 NUC.
Sorry about all the questions’ just want to buy the correct gear

Main difference (aside from the security issues with running Core on a NAS) is that the NUC will likely have more CPU power available than a consumer NAS. This will allow for more extensive DSP Engine usage. This mainly affects the ability to upsample to high rates/DSD, and to apply room corrections. If you are not using either of those features, then you don’t need a strong CPU.

As to internal storage
 Personally, I would leave the music files on your NAS and connect to them via SMB mount. Make the share read-only to a ‘Roon’ user that you create (and optionally make a read/write share for Roon database backups). If you do go the internal drive route, make sure the drive you purchase will fit – some NUC cases have fairly tight physical restrictions on the drive’s height (e.g., 7mm or less).

8GB RAM should be fine, unless you have an absolutely massive library (think 300k+ tracks). Any SSD 64GB or larger should be fine to run ROCK on. Roon’s internal storage requirements for the database is pretty small


In terms of general responsiveness, having your files local to your core (beit a NUC, NAS or other system) is highly beneficial. Roon is rather intimate with your files, and not having to deal with SMB load and latency pays off handsomely.

I would echo Rene, and go for storage local to the NUC (internal + external USB drives if necessary). You can continue to use the NAS for backup of your music files (you do have a backup strategy in place?). Not as good as having off-site backup, but better than no backup at all.

My NUC and NAS are connected to the router via wired Ethernet connections.

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Ive always backed up my FLACS,spent weeks ripping CDs to external HD.

Brilliant i understand a a lot clearer now.
So really internal NUC storage, connected USB HD or local NAS,doesnt matter.One is not more beneficial than the other.

I strongly suggest trying it just using the music share from your NAS first before buying a storage drive for the NUC. The “internal is better” thinking comes from avoiding network or NAS burps. However, in practice, those burps tend to be pretty rare (assuming you aren’t using Wi-Fi to connect them together). Most likely cause of a burp in the modern era is rebooting the NAS to install an OS security update, and Roon recovers from that just fine automatically.

There is NO sound quality benefit to using internal storage.

I second this suggestion.

“internal is better” do you mean HD in the NUC ?

Really I mean any local storage on the NUC, regardless of installed internally or an external HD connected via USB.

As opposed to accessing your music from a NAS over the network. Just use your NAS for the music library storage, you already own it.

Is there much difference between NUCS eg i5SYK,i5WYK and the i5 BNK

Nah
 Not really. Burps are unacceptable in any situation and from a technical point of view, accessing your music over a share is perfectly feasible – and should not make any difference regarding SQ.

Roon Core as a whole however is more responsive when dealing with local files.

I don’t see how, other than perhaps a very tiny difference when starting playback or if you switch to a different track during playback (effectively starting playback from scratch again). Roon pre-buffers ~5 seconds of audio to the endpoint. If you look at the logs, it also starts queuing up and preparing the next track to play before it has to play it, again for the audio pre-buffer. On top of that, most files are much smaller than the resultant audio that Roon generates as Roon sends raw uncompressed audio, possibly upsampled (so it is reading a lot less than it has to send) and the OS does read-ahead buffering on the SMB share. The NAS also has the benefit of multiple spindles and its own OS cache RAM to buffer the reads. (E.g., there is a good chance the NAS is actually faster than the cheap, slow HDDs found in external USB housings or 2.5" laptop drives. Most people can’t afford using a local SSD if their library is measured in TBs
) Under normal usage, I doubt anyone will ever notice a performance difference. All the music browsing (metadata, artwork, etc) is done from the Roon database, which is local to the Core.

(The only time you might see a performance difference is during Roon’s analysis when importing new music. But that’s a one-and-done, not persistent.)

I use Roon with my music library on a NAS and clicking play, changing tracks mid-playback, etc., are “instant”. I cannot detect any lag from the click to playback.

Not in my opinion. I have 6i5SYH 6TH Generation. The 7TH generation was released after I got mine. I have friend with similar setup but newer 7I5 NUC. I’ve heard both and don’t hear difference.

Not talking about playback. Good network = good playback. No discussion about that.

Adding new files is a good example. Apart from analysis, watching file system changes is a pain using a NAS with seperate Core. With local files it is instant.

I nurse a handful of Cores on all kinds of different systems, some of them playing music from a NAS share. The UX of the two Cores with local files is simply better.

Here’s @danny about the subject:

Note: this may or may not be important in different use cases. And as said: no issues with playback and/or SQ.

Would be able to use non powered USB HDs on the NUC ?