Nucleus i7 powerful enough?

Yes. Roon’s DSP is very efficient. I have seen screenshots of an i5 upsampling to DSD 512. An i7 should be able to simultaneously handle multiple Zones as follows:

  • A main Zone with heavy upsampling and multi-channel convolution;

  • A headphone Zone with various DSP tools;

  • Four or five other Zones.

In short, an i7 should easily handle the typical demands of even a large home.

If you want to stress test the Core then adding multiple Zones with heavy upsampling, multi-channel convolution and multiple PEQ filters is the way to do it. Anything less than that should be OK.