ROCK installation on NUC

Roon Software Discussion ROCK
1

Hello. I am new to Roon. I have a new NUC model no NUC8i7INH which has Windows 10 installed, the NUC is not yet powered up for the 1st time.

I would like to add an SSD to rip my CDs to and load ROCK to make a Roon core.

Do I need to I uninstall Win10 before loading ROCK and if so any advice on how to do this so ROCK installs properly?

Thanks

2

Just prepare the image on the USB drive, and the installation process will format both disk, and ask which one is for the Roon database, and that’s it.

3

Thank you…sounds simple so will give it a go

4

The ROCK install will overwrite the chosen OS drive.

I like using external USB hard drives for ROCK storage instead of adding an internal drive. Cheaper. Easier to move around and load music.

Personally, I would get another hard drive to use for ROCK OS, that way I could go back to Win10 if I wanted.

5

Thanks for the info.
Do you know how I would get the NUC to boot from the USB rather than Win10 as it’s set up to do?

Thanks

7

In most cases, the internal drive is empty so the computer will default to USB. During Boot, I think if you press F10 it will bring up the boot menu and you can then select the device to boot from.

See:

8

Thank you. Will be making the attempt on Friday so will post an update

9

What size is the drive that came with the unit?

10

Theres 8Gb Ram and a 256Gb m.2 board I think, I will add a ssd to rip my cd collection onto which I think, from reading support info on the site, the Roon Rock installation will support

11

How many CDs are you talking about? While you CAN rip a CD via ROCK, I wouldn’t want my whole collection of CD’s ripped that way. You end up with a whole bunch of files with generic names (Track1.flac, Track2.flac) in folders with names like “CD-Ripped-2019-08-02–18-19-47”.

Everything appears fine in Roon, which is nice. But if you are going to rip a large number of CDs it would make sense to use something like dBPoweramp (or even iTunes) to end up with something that’s transportable. What are you going to do if you want to bring music to your car, or phone?

2 Likes
12

Hello. I hadnt realised that, and I have a fair number. Haven’t heard of dBPoweramp, so will have a look - I guess this rwould equire an additional storage drive being set up.

13

How many is “a fair number”? I reckon about 300MB per album ripped to FLAC.

You’ll want overhead as well.

14

Around 500 I guess

15

You can use Roon’s Export function to export your selected albums/tracks to a staging folder. All the basic metadata will be added, and renaming of the folders/tracks to artist/album and track titles done automatically by Roon.

16

So you’ll need roughly 300*500 = 150GB of drive space for those. Double that to future proof it and it would fit on a modern SSD hard drive.

Bear in mind you really don’t need the speed though. I would possibly use a USB hard drive or a NAS (mine is in the cellar, so no noise).

I would also rip straight to the USB using something like dBPowerAmp or XLD (Mac OSX). These will prepoulate the metadata in the vast majority of CD rips. I started with Sooloos and learnt from experience it was worth getting the metadata right from the off, with consistent naming and tagging. It saves a lot of time later on.

17

Thank you for the info

18

Thanks for the info

19

Well, really all you need on the ‘ripping computer’ is enough space to store the discs you ripped in a batch. Then you could move them over to the NUC’s internal drive.
That said, any solution here should include a backup strategy, as you are now investing a lot into the process. So a USB drive of some sort would be important anyway.

1 Like
20

…this is why I’ve stayed away from “computer audio” to date…too complex / too many variables

21

Windows wIll have more ripping options for sure and will run your library just fine on that Nuc.

You can rip in windows or Mac if you have another computer. Rock doesn’t allow anything other roon to run but the ripper is really just for the odd disk