Nucleus One vs NUC 7i5 - Thoughts?

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

The leap from 4 - 8 is significant I feel more than to 16. Saying that I did notice an improvement with Rock when I moved from 8gb to 16gb ram was same model just bigger capacity.

I wouldn’t be surprised that the RAM in the One isn’t the fastest or one of the more renowned manufacturers though. They never put top components in the old models so can’t see them changing it up now.

Yet my not very big library on Linux consumes after a few days of use, more than 4gb of ram and will continue to grow the longer it’s up. Roon has some memory issues if you ask me as this isn’t unique to me or Linux and I don’t think the 4GB cuts it anymore and this has shown for a few users of the One as it has crashed constantly due to it processing their library which is a process that does consume a lot go Ram and doesn’t ever seem to release it. After it’s done one of its metadata updates I can see my Ram increase and not return.

[Arindal]

@Suedkiez

I am surprised you haven’t seen the “drop-outs when upsampling to DSD512” posts. Some Roon users always try crazy thing (a stochastic necessity when the user base is large enough, I suppose). People bring faster processes to their knees.

I have seen this thread even making my own experiments with upsampling to DSD256. But I do not think there is a big overlap of people running an N100 and those demanding such DSD512 performance. Would assume the latter either know what they are doing or can afford a Nucleus Titan.

Maybe I am wrong.

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

Titan couldn’t match an n100 or n95 at the same upsampling task in the thread @Suedkiez is on about. Titan floundered they didn’t. This was downsampling dsd512 to dsd128.

[SandsOfArrakis (The Spice Must Flow)]

I’ve actually noticed quite an improvement going from a 8 gb M1 MacBook Pro running MacOS to a 16 gb Lenovo laptop running Linux. My Roon interface runs much faster on both my iPad and my NUC. RAM usage sits around 7 gb here with Linux + Roon and a 86.7k track library.

With my current LMDE 6 installation RAM creep doesn’t seem to happen so far. But in the past I was running Roon and Linux Mint on my old 2014 Mac Mini. And Roon kept eating RAM there. Forcing me to restart the computer every few days. Otherwise Roon became slow as hell and very unresponsive.

[Arindal]

@CrystalGipsy

Yet my not very big library on Linux consumes after a few days of use, more than 4gb of ram and will continue to grow the longer it’s up.

Interesting, thanks for the insight. Always thought Nucleus One would crash once RAM consumption exceeds the physically available RAM.

Roon is definitely memory-hungry and there are reports of increasing memory consumption over time. Fully agree that 4GB might not be enough with a medium-sized, overly complex library exceeding 50k tracks. At least that is exactly what my roon server is consuming on an average base with 60k tracks (and I have 8GB of RAM installed).

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@CrystalGipsy

Titan couldn’t match an n100 or n95 at the same upsampling task in the thread @Suedkiez is on about. Titan floundered they didn’t. This was downsampling dsd512 to dsd128.

Well it’s not just one thread. There’s one thing we can be sure of: For every soft limit there will be Roon users who break it.

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

If they charge 4k for what is a very basic pc in nice case, they are going to come under scrutiny.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Of course, if never said the Titan isn’t overpriced. (Though in that one thread with the downsampling failing, we don’t really know if something was wrong with that particular Titan or something. I’d like to see more cases before judging that one).

[simon_pepper]

Me too, will stay on the NUC7i7DNKE with the same board/CPU as the Rev B Nucleus+
Mine has 2x8GB DRAM with a 250GB NVMe PCI 3.0 SSD to boot

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

Yes I guess we won’t know as it all went to DM.

[IncaRoads (UHD)]

@Arindal

The question is which DSP load you are imagining from roon that would be putting multiple cores of an N100 under stress for hours. If you play 3 or 4 simultaneous streams of PCM768>DSD512 with convolution and heavy DSP, maybe this would bring an N100 to thermal limits on the long run.

Does not sound like a realistic scenario for the majority of roon users. Usual DSP operations and all the conventional resolutions (PCM192 or DSD128) eat up very little of one core’s capacity and I am not sure many people run more than 4 ´bold´ stream simultaneously.

Hi guys, since I come from hardware/software development, I enjoy following the discussions! But sometimes people compare apples with oranges, and some users are then even more confused! Actually, it’s quite simple!
Normal user: Nucleus One
Power user: Nucleus Titan
For users who want something different and are technically savvy: Roon Rock
Sorry, just my opinion👋

[bevan_court]

So the library is around 17k with 1150 albums.

And again, not night and day, but just not as many lags that I notice. Worth doing if you have some DDR4 RAM lying around.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@bevan_court

And again, not night and day, but just not as many lags that I notice.

From a few posts up:

Nucleus Memory Upgrade

A symptom of needing RAM is a crash, nothing else. Roon OS does not have a swap file or do anything else memory based on the SSD. It’s all in RAM. If you added RAM, you shouldn’t feel any changes other than “its not crashing anymore”. If you weren’t crashing before, adding RAM will not cause your system to speed up (Nucleus doesn’t swap), and should have zero other impact other than growth potential. Roon doesn’t use more RAM just because it has access to it.

Roon Nucleus RAM Upgrade?

We do not throttle RAM usage. If you got a performance increase from replacing the RAM, it’s because the RAM got faster, or you are experiencing a placebo effect. If you have too little RAM, Roon does not use slower storage to keep working, it just runs out and crashes. Some systems (windows, macos, many linux distributions, etc…), depending on the install, will swap out the contents of less commonly used physical RAM to SSD/HDD. On those systems, you would feel a massive performance drop if …

[IncaRoads (UHD)]

The Celeron processor also handles DSD/PCM conversion with high sample rates effortlessly

Here you can see in the signal analysis one of the most computationally intensive operations that a music server can be expected to perform: the real-time conversion of high-resolution DSD to PCM. The Nucleus One shows that it can complete this process 2.7 times in real time.

Test in German audio magazine LowBeats!

Test: Roon Nucleus One – preiswerter Komplett-Musikserver - LowBeats

[Milkplus]

Sorry to bump and old-ish thread but would a NUC7I5DNK for around €140 be a decent buy for a ROCK server?

I’d only be using one zone and not likely much DSP. Mainly just Roon as a frontend for Qobuz and a modest library (2000+ tracks) stores on a NAS. However, would be interested in using RoonArc.

Would love a Nucleus but not really looking to spend that kind of money. Endpoint is a Eversolo DMP-A6 ME.

[mikeb]

I’ll quote myself from above to save you scrolling up

TLDR: If you’re on a budget, a 7i5 should work fine, but with less GUI “snappiness”.

@mikeb

a 7i5 is getting a bit long in the tooth - I went from a 7i5 to a 13i5 and there’s a huge boost in “snappiness”. In terms of actually playing music, and SQ, there’s no difference at all, but the overall experience is much smoother. Network performance is much better.

[SandsOfArrakis (The Spice Must Flow)]

https://www.gmktec.com/products/intel-alder-lake-n97-mini-pc-nucbox-g5?srsltid=AfmBOopo9fnMF079EBaH16-0Mf2Me7fO9rPUKZYVYzEEegGQ4eRSEUnO&variant=14ca2ba3-a59d-49b4-9529-ed0cab5bf9b1

I’m running one of these with Roon Rock. It handles 3 zones with volume leveling easily. Qobuz + local collection (97k tracks total). Runs pretty quick. It should be more than sufficient for your needs.

[Milkplus]

Nice! Never seen these before. Are you running RoonArc, too?

[SandsOfArrakis (The Spice Must Flow)]

Yes. I listen to ARC a lot when at work using my iPhone. It works great. The basic model with 12 gb of RAM and 250 gb SSD is more then enough.

I’ve stored my local collection on a 3 tb USB powered hard drive directly connected to the NUC.

[Milkplus]

That’s definitely encouraging to hear. But I guess because it isn’t a NUC it’s not officially supported? Anything I should know when it comes to installing Rock? Or is it all pretty straightforward?