Question About Adding ROON Nucleus+

I have a Hegal H190 which I currently use with an Auralic Aries G1 for streaming from Tidal and Quboz. I have been looking at ROON and am considering adding a Nucleus but have some questions…

  1. Is it worth it? The Auralic and LS software serves its purpose but I am intrigued by the seemingly more advanced ROON software.

  2. How best to connect the Nucleus+ into my system? I will be connecting via Ethernet as both the Hegel and Aries are wired into my network. But I am unclear as to if I should connect to the Aries Endpoint or the Hegel?

Any thoughts and suggestions welcome.

Thanks

One of the strongest points of Roon is its library management and software interface. The good news is that you don’t need to take anyone’s word: just do a trial with no cost.

Just connect the Nucleus or Nucleus+ by Ethernet to your existing network and, as the Aries G1 is Roon Ready, you will see that as a Roon endpoint and can enable it in the Roon set up. Here is a link to the Nucleus online manual with additional details.

You probably have already read about this, but it is worth a moment to consider your choices and what you really need. The Nucleus+ is at the top of the food chain for all but the most intensive applications. For all that you get with the Nucleus+ you pay around $2500. At the other end are the Nuc/ROCK systems that will cost about $500-$900, depending on how you build it out. You do need to put it together, but its really pretty simple to do. It might take an hour.

If you don’t need heavy duty signal processing (room corrections and upsampling) and have a average-sized library, the Nucleus ($1400) or a simple Nuc ($500) will work great for you.

Value and worth are subjective. Only you can decide. But there are no bad choices here.

One other thing. Roon is awesome, but it does so much it takes a while to wrap your arms around it and really understand it. Getting Roon, a Nucleus+ and installing it all would be exciting, but it could also be daunting depending on your circumstances. Some personalities would go all in, others would be better served by gradual immersion.