I’m not sure where large library’s are coming in but he already said the above so I’m guessing small library…
PLUS
“and I am not planning to use digital signal processing.”
Hi there,
I’ve been running ROON on the DS220+ for about 6 months, the memory has been expanded to 10GB, there are 2x SSD WD Red 4TB in the NAS. Even if the requirements are not met, it runs stably and without failures over 2 rooms with different Roon bridges. However, I don’t run a DSP or similar. I previously had a Nucleus, PrimeMini with Core i3 and Core i7 as a separate Roon Core and didn’t want to have two devices anymore. In terms of sound, I don’t notice any difference in my composition.
No deterioration, no no problems. About 3000 albums, Flac / 24Bit / DSD.
BR
Thorsten
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I heartily disagree. I have a 2TB library with ~41,000 tracks. I’ve been using a Synology DS 918+, and apart from a couple of temporary and minor issues not unique to the NAS - all of which are solved - my experience has been awesome.
Part of that awesome experience is that I get to play the very same music collection and playlists that I use at home in Roon when I am away from home (through DS Audio and Audio Station). That seems to be quite difficult for non-NAS users to achieve.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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With the availability of streaming services, users can have large libraries without the need for local files at all. As more was left unsaid than not in the OP, this seems to be a general request “On which Synology NAS can the Roon core be installed” and other users popped in with their own specific questions.
As far as I can tell, the link I posted already covers all the current NAS devices the RoonServer app can be installed on (minus some exotics that are probably of no use for the OP anyway but including even the ones I personally would stay away from).
Ok yes your point regarding RAID not being sufficiently for backups is a good one. I guess because of my bad experiences with both SSDs and spinning platters dying soon after buying has me mostly concentrating on hardware failure.
BTW don’t mean to shoot any messengers. It just seemed to me that (now correctly phrasing it) if your primary concern is hardware failure then a RAID NAS price performance is hard to beat.
Also my Roon use model is very simple: doesn’t have any fancy convolution, HQPlayer etc. So the NAS works well for me at least in the last couple of years.
That’s an excellent point about having access outside the house with a NAS. I’m planning on getting to do something over the next few months regarding that with a Pi softether setup and Roon running on phone + DAC.
Well, yes, but not with our own painstakingly-curated metadata. I have highly refined track dates, album artwork, genre information, playlist assignments, etc., none of which would or could exist in a streaming service, but that both DS Audio and Roon share access to…
No one said something else, I just replied to Phil_Ryan, trying to answering his questions/concerns.
Mirroring comes with the requirement of doubling the storage space without a chance to use it. The additional costs for DAS are usually low. So buy two DAS devices of the size you need instead, one online connected to the core, the other as backup (connected to your PC/laptop; no need to be always online) and you have a backup. Should the one connected to the core fail, just replace it with the backup one (then go and buy a new one for backup). Pretty much the same cost as RAID-1 DAS but provides backup (the ability to recover from data loss if needed).
Because of the high costs of mirroring, I personally don’t know how to justify a setup with redundancy on a 2-bay NAS, especially If you add the additional costs for a backup drive (pay extra for the NAS electronics (versus DAS) and three drives but you can only use the capacity of one). On a 4-bay NAS and up you can choose a more efficient redundancy option at least.
But everyone is free to use what he wants.
Dear all, thanks for your quick responses and advice. Roon quotes that the server software can be installed on a NAS that meets certain requirements. So it is a possible solution.
So did I get an answer to my question: On which Synology NAS can the Roon Core be installed?
I got a few examples of people that have successfully installed Roon on Synology NAS and they mention the modelnummer. So thanks for sharing your experiences. Others just question whether it is good idea to run Roon on a NAS. But that was not my question. Roon supports it and it is a practical solution for me.
So how can I discover form the list of available Synology NAS devices, which one is compatible with Roon?
A couple of month ago a bought an QNAP HS-264 silent NAS with 2 X 1TB. In total 830 EURO.
A nice little thing that is absolut SILENT.
Only have 240 GB music files.
PS: I know, I need to remove the dust 
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The other mike_o
I have 2 x USB external drives that are mirrored to my main library drive. In my case the main is an SSD in a NUC but the principal is the same
By clicking on the link to the product list I provided. Just choose the one you like the most.
Her is a link to the post again:
Thanks for the link to Synology. Sorry, but I assumed that this list was just the standard product list. I had not recognised that you had filtered it for compatibility with Roon.
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This topic comes up frequently and is hotly debated.
Form a purely cost based perspective, a NAS isn’t really an economically sensible way of running a Roon core. You can purchase a NUC/Roon Nucleus(+) that meets the required specs for less.
However, there are certain advantages to a NAS -
• Redundancy - multiple RAID options are available, which can mitigate inevitable drive failure
• Backup - most NAS have the ability to seamlessly integrate on-site/off-site backup of data
• Network bandwidth - NUCs/Nucleus(+) are limited to 1Gb bandwidth. Lots of NAS devices have the capability to run 10 Gb plus network connections.
• Storage - NAS allow massive storage capacities, way beyond what a NUC/Nucleus(+) can offer.
I was in the fortunate position of having an existing Synology RS3617xs Rackstation, so adding Roon core duties to it was a no-brainer. The CPU is more than up to the task, I have over 20GB of storage, backup of music files to Backblaze B2 is seamless, I have 20Gb of network bandwidth and an RX1217 expansion module to slot in SSDs for the database.
To NAS or not to NAS isn’t a cut and dried decision. It largely depends on what other duties you may have outside of Roon that could be served by a multi-functional device.
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In my earlier posts, I wasn’t implying that I install Roon core on a NAS, but rather run Roon core on a Mac (as I do now) or Linux or PC or NUC or wherever and access the NAS over the network. That’s what I’m using the NAS for.
A NAS isn’t a great solution for music storage due to network latency between storage and the core. It’s preferable to have music storage local to the core rather than networked to it.
I explained my peculiarly unusual use case. For most users a NAS is not a good option for either the core or for music storage networked to the core.
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How much music files do you have? I’m thinking that BackBlaze to back up all that must be expensive. (I mean for someone like me with 4-5TB of DSD and FLAC files…)
I have around 10TB uploaded to Backblaze. My bill for last month was £12.70.
Not sure why you think this. Even high bitrate DSD only consumes about 22 megabits per second…way less than 100 mbps or 1gbps connections that are standard today. The latency of those connections is a tiny component of the overall performance & bandwidth unless you have an exceedingly poorly implemented network. I’ve never had a single problem playing or analyzing/editing my ginormous high res audio files stored on my NAS on any device I have in my network in my house. Same with video, which is way more intensive than audio.
And to be clear: I’m not suggesting that network attached storage is faster than direct attached storage. I’m merely saying that NAS is more than fast enough for all audio.
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