My Cambridge Audio CXNv2 has become roon ready thanks to the latest firmware update, so I’ve signed up for the 14 day trial.
I’ve done some reading and the setup of my core looks borderline so I wondered if anyone with similar equipment has had a good or bad experience. Other suggestions or recommendations are welcome.
My Setup:
Core:
QNAP TS-451
CPU: Intel Celeron 2.41GHz dual-core processor (burst up to 2.58GHz)
RAM: 8GB
Storage: Spinning disk RAID 5
Control:
Android Tablet, Android Phones and Windows 10
Output:
Cambridge Audio CXNv2
Library:
5000 tracks on NAS
Tidal HiFi
Playing around last night it seemed okay with no major issues. The cataloguing process seemed quite slow though but that’s acceptable while setting up. I enabled volume normalisation (auto) and this seemed to take a while to kick in for each song.
My NAS can’t take an SSD upgrade but I could get a USB3.1 portable SSD and plug it into the USB 3 port for the database. Would this help if I experience any slowness?
I don’t think you can put Roon and It’s data base on a USB disk. You’d have to re-build your disk configuration to achieve this. 3 spinning disks in a raid (if a 3-disk raid is possible) or the 3 disks in a mirror config (raid 0) for ‘everything’ including the music files. An SSD in the fourth slot for Roon. I do not own a NAS like this myself so I know little about setting it up. Have you got 8GB of ram in the NAS?
The speedup with a SSD would be very noticeable. The Celeron processor is below Roon minimum spec, but a base 2.41GHz is most likely adequate for a relatively small local library like yours. The question is if it’s good enough for Tidal.
EDIT: seems I made two errors here. It IS possible to point Roon’s data base to an external disk after installation.
If I’d read the first post properly I would have noticed 8GB ram.
I’ve turned off both Audio Analysis option in Settings->Library. This helps save some CPU use. Volume levelling will not work when this is turned off so you must consider the consequences.
Sounds like audio analysis wasn’t finished, so you got on the fly results which can’t be immediate. This should no longer be the case after analysis has finished and all values are stored in the DB. As far as my experience goes, you may even be able to live happily with the DB on the spinning disks with a library of around 5000 tracks. As the SSD is just needed for the DB (not for the music files) and a NAS is a headless Roon Core, possible slowness will be seen on the Remotes and it might be hard to tell if it’s because of the (maybe slow) Remote (connection) or if it’s related to the DB on the spinning disks. As the advice / recommendation is very clear about it, I would add a SSD if possible. A USB connected one should be fine AFIAK but can’t tell if there is anything specific to consider or there are any downsides as my NAS is all SSD (and the second Core with spinning disks only not a NAS and not used often enough to notice anything).
Performance actually seems okay now that the analysis has completed. Now I just need to add all the missing artwork for the artist thumbnails that are missing. I didn’t think my collection was that obscure .
I have been using a very similar setup. A QNAP TS-451+ with three 3TB disks in Raid5 and a 1GB SSD disk in the fourth slot for the Roon core. Everything has been working great except for MQA in Tidal, I am getting dropouts when playing MQA songs from tidal through my Pro-Ject Pre-Box S2 Digital DAC. This is not happening with DSD files sitting in the NAS or with CD quality tidal songs. Only with MQA. I don’t know if this is due to the NAS being below specs (e.g: CPU) or the DAC.
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