I believe that the power adaptor that you are using can affect the quality of the music
I Have a Rock playing using an Auralic Vega - should I improve my power adaptors and if so what would people recommend?
A very contentious subject.
Personally I’d suggest you keep what you have and give fifty percent of the money you’ve saved to your favourite charity. 
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Thanks Ged
You hear all sorts of advice from people who (may have) a vested interest
All I know is that today I was forced to listen to my music using my laptop as the core - when I was able to restore the ROCK the difference in quality of the music was very noticeable
Although my HiFi desires have changed, my contributions haven’t -
It’s a way that I can live with myself-ishness.
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Ken you have discovered that how you listen to Roon matters, quality of components can make a difference. But the danger here is chasing what will be ever decreasing gains. The question is what connections go to your NUC? I have power and Ethernet. USB is unused.
You might have been overlooking some substantial setup pitfalls while temporarily inserting the laptop.
As just one glaring example, the difference could have been caused by not consulting Roon’s signal path to verify identical quality as with your Rock?
If that’s the case, don’t go into Looney-Fi land and keep a sane mind!
Rather, find some good music, kick up your feet and lean back…
Hi Henry
I just have the ethernet plus power source but also my music is on an external hard drive connected via USB. The hard drive has it’s own power source
Thanks Marin
How would I consult Roon’s signal path? I don’t understand what that is but would like to
Regards
Ken
Power adaptors produce noise. But solar panels are worse. Replace adaptors in the audio chain with good linear supply’s and use good netfilters to suppress the noise from all the other adaptors, that all helps especially in city’s where the net is totally polluted. It’s not voodoo, it’s just electronics.
nitpicking on
…solar panels produce pure DC…
…attached inverters may produce noise, but good manufacturers build adequate filtering into the units to be a non issue…
…good switch mode supplies may even be measurably better than good linear supplies - too many generalizations and “alternative facts” to confuse and misguide laymen…
nitpicking off
Thanks Marin
It’s so obvious now you point it out
Addressing the routes for noise into and out of your NUC, on the power side you could try a quality linear PSU for the NUC and maybe experiment with an isolator for the USB port. I say experiment. Buy everything on a 30 day return basis if possible. Network isolation is a different and altogether more contentious matter but there are threads here that discuss this. I found a benefit using an EtherRegen. Some people have found no benefit but the vast majority of naysayers have never tried network isolation. All I will say is I can easily afford what I have purchased and I have returned things that didn’t do as advertised. Oh, and my contributions to charity (time and money) are healthy and not at all driven by retail guilt!
You are right, the solar panels without the necessary equipment don’t produce noise. It would be nice if, connected to a battery, they can feed our equipment, so we don’t need those big transformers and caps anymore.
Those convertors produce more noise when they are more efficient (in general) So it is always a compromise. They also have a lower internal resistance while the norm is 50Ohms, so audio equipment psu’s have more trouble to deal with the noise of solar panels than with adaptors (in general, there are also good digital psu’s I hope because I just bought a Hypex amp, but in general those cheap adaptors produce noise 
)
Proof of concept:
Recently inserted an Intona USB isolator between my core and USB DAC.
I just couldn’t get rid of audible noise through the speakers, which was independent of volume setting, grounding scheme and even whether the DAC was powered on, as long as everything was connected and the core being powered up.
The Intona USB isolator provides galvanic isolation while supporting full USB Hi-Speed (480 MBit/s), which I’m dependent upon due to maximally upsampling all content, and this does eliminate the noise completely.
Bought it via the manufacturer’s eBay shop for 189€.
Yes, used less expensive RPi3 and 4 bridges with varying OS’s for galvanic isolation before, but I experienced random and more or less frequent slight clicking noises which I desperately tried to eliminate ever since using Roon.
Now, no more RPi-clicking and computer noises, just music🤩