Nucleus+ and thunderbolt device

Support Nucleus Support
1

I have a listening room that serves 2 purposes recording live music and audiophile listening.
I currently have a MacBook pro running the Roon core. An apogeedigital.com Ensemble thunderbolt II music interfaceinterface(https://www.apogeedigital.com/products/ensemble) is connected via the thunderbolt port. The Room core recognizes and uses the Ensemble interface beautifully.
The Ensemble interfaces does double duty as a preamp and A/D converter for driving the amp and for plugging/instuments and microphones for recording (I use Logic Pro as the DAW software).
The D/A circuits are among the best in the industry. I just bought a Nucleus+ would like to use it to replace the MacBook pro. The question is how to connect it. I see that there is a currently unused thunderbolt connector in the Nucleus+ that would be the natural way to do it (Is there an ETA for that?).
Other digital inputs available on the ensemble are:

  • ADAT: 16 channels 44.1-48 kHz on 2 Toslink connectors
  • SMUX: 8 channels 88.2-96 kHz on 2 Toslink connectors
  • S/PDIF: 4 channels, up to 96 kHz on 2 Toslink connectors
  • Coax IN: 2 channels of S/PDIF, up to 192 kHz on 1 RCA connector
    Any suggestions?
3

Intels Thunderbolt support in Linux is sketchy. Too much for Roon to risk using it. If Intel can sort that out it will make its way onto the ROCK and Nucleus builds.

4

Hello @Joel_Kaplan,

Thunderbolt support on Nucleus and Nucleus+ is dependent on Intel shipping a usable thunderbolt Linux driver; the situation is currently out of our hands.

You can find a few Roon Ready networked as well as Roon Tested USB SPDIF converters on our Partner Device Matrix page. Generally, any USB device with solid Linux support should work without issue on Nucleus, however we cannot guarantee support like we can with Roon Tested USB devices.

https://kb.roonlabs.com/Partner_Devices_Matrix

-John