I'm looking for best recommendations for a Roon system that will work best for a collection of over 500,000 tracks.
I'm trying to perfect my system to deal with my large Roon database and I'd love to hear from Roon Support or anyone else that knows what the most important considerations are to insure I have a system that runs as best as possible, given the large collection. Most of what I've read on the community site is dated at this point, so I'm hoping I can get latest info here.
Here are the factors I believe are important that I've like advice on:
OS: I would ideally like to run Roon on a mac but curious if it would run better on stand along NAS in docker?
CPU: Is Roon multithreaded? Is it best to get fastest CPU score overall or is single-threaded score most important?
GPU: Does Roon use the GPU heavily or not really?
Music on Hard Drive: I assume as long as I have all my music on a RAID5 4x8TB SSD array with at least 10gbs ethernet or potentially USB4 connection I'll be fine.
Internet speed: Is this the biggest bottleneck I'll face for a large library? I know Roon server needs the 'cloud' for various aspects, so how much of a speed limitation is this? I have a 1gbs up/down Fiber connection so I can't get any better than this where I live. I would hope this would be more than adequate but I could foresee this as being the biggest bottleneck in a set up if Roon needs to access a lot of things on their side before it bounces back to my server.
RAM: How much RAM would I need to allocate for 500,000+ tracks?
Any other factors I need to consider?
Thanks to any Roon Support answers or tech-minded fellow users!
Describe your network setup
currently 1gbs up/down fiber -> asus RT-AX86U -> imac i9 32GB RAM. storage on 3 drives (2ssd and one RAID HDD)
But in this case you would want to run a PC with NVIDIA card to offload HQPlayer from the main Roon server.
Lots of RAM and the fastest CPU you can afford (with focus on single core speed):
Yes
No, the local network is, in particular latency. The server must be on wired Ethernet. Most of the Roon database is local. Of course it should be installed on a fast SSD.
Endpoints can be on good wifi, but use Ethernet if you can.
1 gbps internet is more than fine.
Apple Silicon Minis make great Roon Servers. (As you know, RAM can be costly, but it’s less critical to have lots with Apple Silicon). Turn off all the autosleeping stuff.
Thanks a lot for your pointers. I’ve read through the [Roon Hardware Specification Recommendations] already but your info on the single threaded CPU stuff is especially importantr as that was one thing I had not known about yet. I’ve been trying to decide about a really nice NAS ( UGREEN NASync DXP480T Plus) versus using a really fast direct attached storage (OWC Express 4M2 - which is crazy fast 4 bay SSD enclosure) along with a new m4 mac mini. I’m starting to lean towards the high end Mac mini with DAS (rather than NAS) as I will need other Mac related functions for my server on occasion in addition to Roon functions. I think with this current crop of m4 mac mini’s they are powerful enough to act as a Roon server along with the various other server functions I need. (currently I’m mostly fine with a 2019 i9 iMac.
I think my main current bottlenecks might be that I have my music on 3 different drives 1 local ssd with system, one attached ssd, and one attached RAID HDD. Also my i9 for single threaded operations scores a 2915, whereas I believe a Roon Titan is at 3337 and if I got the new m4 mac mini it’s single threaded score is a crazy: 4575, so one hopes that will help things.
Basically, for your case any mac with M1 or i7 and more should be enough.
Likely, the largest bottleneck we observe for most people contacting us with big databases is RAM lack so please make sure to get as much RAM as possible. We’d recommend getting 32 GB of RAM.
Regarding the Multithread: Roon is using more than one thread, but for some activities SIngle thread performance is important so make sure please to have CPU with powerful core please, as it was said above - your i9 mac should be enough for it.
Internet speed is not likely to be a bottleneck for you, but we strongly recommend to wire your infrastructure to Ethernet as much as possible.
Hi Alex, thank you very much for your response. I deeply appreciate getting any additional tech info like this from staff, so thanks again.
Re: ethernet. Yes, 100% noted and indeed my server is connected via ethernet.
Re: RAM, yes, currently at 32GB total system RAM and if I get the new Mac Mini, will be getting 48GB. In terms of how to get Roon to know it’s ‘allowed’ to use more RAM, is there a setting somewhere? …I know this type of thing is slightly harder to do on MacOS these days, so let me know. One hopes it will just use what’s available, but if there’s a specific setting somewhere let me know.
Also, one important note I’ve not mentioned yet. I’ve discovered that if I keep an instance of Roon Remote running on my server (not just the server app running) I get better performance when I use Roon Remote on my phone or laptop.. Does this jibe with what you have experienced? Is this a ‘thing’? …or am I imagining things? I’m guessing that it just forces more stuff into RAM so that’s why I’m getting better performance that way. But I wanted to bring it up in case you guys had any additional insight on that.
Ha, yes, things are running smoothER, at least. Before if I launched roon remote and did any kind of a search I’d be up the creek without a paddle.
Still not possible to use Roon ARC though due to the size my collection. I’m hoping you can get apple to fix the size of data issue you’ve mentioned in the past or make Roon allow for a smaller portion of my library to be available to ARC (which would also be fine, as long as I can access SOME of my stuff).
“Still not possible to use Roon ARC though due to the size my collection…”
Some users with very large libraries have reported that, after several retry attempts, the initial ARC sync eventually completes.
You can also try reducing the load by starting with a smaller portion of your library sync with ARC and then adding music in batches — for example, in increments of ~100k tracks.
We understand your request for Apple to address the data-size limitations on iOS, and for an option to sync only a subset of the library. Your feedback is valid, and we’ve shared it internally.
Regarding your question about running Roon on macOS vs. Docker/NAS:
Please note that virtualized or containerized environments (including Docker) are not officially supported, and performance or stability can vary depending on the host system.
A dedicated macOS machine running Roon Server natively will generally provide a more consistent and predictable experience compared to Docker-based NAS setups.
If you’d like to explore the best hardware arrangement for your specific library size and usage, feel free to let us know — we’re happy to help.
Vadim, thanks for your additional info. Good to know regarding the Docker approach. I think I’ve settled now on the strategy of getting a high power mac Mini along with a USB4 DAS, rather than the fast NAS approach. Seems like it will be best for both Roon purposes as well as my various other server needs.
Regarding ARC though, can you please explain further if it’s possible for me to non-destructively start with a ‘smaller portion of’ my library? …Or is the only way to do this is to fully get rid of any library items (and all the meta-data) and start from scratch with the library again. Obviously I’m hoping to not loose any metadata I have. I had tried previously to temporarily disable certain portions of the library, but that didn’t seem to make a difference.
Getting ARC to work in some way would be a massive bonus for my Roon experience.
OK, got it thanks. I may have to wait then. …or when I get my new system. I can explore whether to rebuild from scratch of do a transfer. If I rebuilt from scratch I can see about isolating a certain amount of music from what Roon library will look at.
Definitely let me know if Roon/Apple are able to make any advances in the library/data size area in the meantime. Hopefully a solution will occur.
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