A bit of history: I’ve been a digital tinkerer for years. Sonos, Bluesound, various PC app players and USB output into various DACs, music library on Synology, Spotify, Tidal etc etc. and I was a subscriber to Roon for a while too. I ran my Core on my Synology (DSM v6.x.x) and it performed pretty well despite never bothering with the SSD option for hosting the database. My last primary Roon endpoint was a Bluesound running coax into an RME ADI2 FS DAC and then XLR into my old Musical Fidelity M6si amp. I also fed various Sonos appliances from Roon on occasion too, but for listening to CD and higher resolution, the Bluesound in to the RME and M6si was preferred.
A few things started happening which resulted in my need for Roon dissipating to a point where I couldn’t justify keeping it (these issues were all “of their time” and some have been fixed since had I stayed the course):
- some uncertainty with running the Core on Synology upcoming DSM v7 prior to its release
- a desire to drop Tidal meant my only CD/PCM options were the 500 or so albums stored locally on my NAS
- I wanted to go to Qobuz, but it was not available at that time in Australia
All-in-all, I decided to let my Roon sub lapse. I used Spotify to serve the Sonos ecosystem for background music whilst doing domestic stuff or hosting parties etc and allowed the Bluesound to connect to my NAS for PCM playback when I wanted to connect properly with my favourite music. I started listening to more vinyl again. It wasn’t a terrible predicament, to be fair.
Being a perpetual tinkerer, I had it in mind to always come back to Roon once Qobuz was launched. It took longer than expected, but the launch happened eventually. My plan was to wait for the fixes or new release for the Roon Synology Package to work on DSM 7. Upgrade to DSM 7 on the Synology and then install the new Roon Synology Package. Then I got overtaken by my own lack of attention span. Here’s what happened:
- bought a Lumin T2 because of so many recommendations on here (@Rockhound - looking at you here!) and because I witnessed first-hand how good customer support is for the product (@wklie - what a legend)
- note to self: sort out Roon
- found an irritating input crosstalk issue on the M6si which resulted in a RTB for investigation by the Australian distributor - ended-up being declared within spec anyway - just noticeable due to high sensitivity of Tannoy DC10 speakers
- bought a McIntosh MA352 after the amazing 100% refund from the M6si distributor as the amp could not satisfy my use case - incredibly generous and more than fair
- note to self: sort out Roon, stop procrastinating!!
- started rolling tubes in my McIntosh
- inadvertently deleted my old Roon backups from my Synology when doing some housekeeping
- bought and listened to more vinyl
- Christmas
- are you going to get Roon working yet?
- started buying and hoarding valves in bulk
- new MC cartridge and phono amp and lots more vinyl sessions
- became annoyed at the poor Qobuz options for an artist radio type function so decided to get Roon going again (Roon Radio really is the bomb) and got ready to resubscribe - discovered the above deletion
- oooh, look! A bee!
So fast forward a fair bit more and I finally ran out of procrastination options and was looking to grab a new SSD to add to my NAS for the Roon database and do it properly this time, but a generic fanless i5 3317U with 8G Ram and a 64G SSD (System Drive) came up for sale on another forum I am on for very little cash. Despite the fantastic work done by @crieke in providing ongoing Synology support, I figured maybe I ought to go the appliance route this time and not put all my eggs in one basket with the 9 year old Synology.
So the fanless box arrived this morning and it took me less than an hour to get it up and running with ROCK, resubscribe, point Roon at my Qobuz account and index my NAS music repository. Stupidly easy.
Damn. Roon Radio is worth the price of entry alone - Mrs Tel always was a big fan and found the lack of radio-type options within Qobuz meant she often would just use Spotify Connect and not care about the quality. This was probably the catalyst that finally got me to sort it out.
It’s good to be back - it really is the icing on the cake of enjoying my music.
Tel