Not sure if this is the right place to post this… My intent is to provide feedback to Roon Rock developers and KB authors. I just spent about 2 hours setting up a Rock install on a NUC10i3FNH. This is one of the supported NUCs. My music is on a Synology NAS.
Generally the installation instructions were fine – I now have a running installation and have switched my clients (I forget what Roon calls the software on iOS, Windows, etc., to use Roon) to use my new server. So that’s the good news…
There were three areas that slowed me down. The BIOS modification document didn’t match the BIOS options in my BIOS. The first confusing thing to me was that there are two different BIOS UIs depending on the age of your NUC. You document both where there are differences, but if you aren’t aware that there are two different UIs then seeing these options is very confusing. It took me quite a while to read between the lines and try different places in the BIOS to find where to change the settings.
The second area that slowed me down was adding the CODEC. The most challenging aspect of this is that Rock is a Linux-based product and this part of the documentation assumes more Linux knowledge than I have. I consider myself a Windows expert and have a smattering of Unix/Linux knowledge but it would have been helpful to have better documentation for this important area for people who know Windows and don’t know Linux.
The third area that slowed me down was pointing to my NAS as a backup source. I knew the IP address of the NAS and I knew where the backup folder was. But it took me forever to figure out the exact path that Rock needed. Your example in the Add Network Share documentation is ambiguous. The name of my NAS is “WmsAve” and I kept trying to put that name in the network path. Turns out that you don’t do this: \192.168.86.36\WmsAve\music, you use \192.168.86.36\music.
In " Migrating To ROCK Step 3: Configuration" you point to another document: “FAQ: How do I move my collection to a new folder, hard drive or NAS, Will I lose my edits”. It doesn’t really address my use case. I’ll elaborate below…
My use case is one that I suspect is one of the most prevalent: I decided to try Roon. I have some purchased music on my Synology NAS and I have a Tidal account. During the free trial I set up a Roon core on my desktop Windows PC and pointed to my NAS and added my Tidal account. I spent the last two weeks playing around, learning, and enjoying. I am very happy to continue with a paid subscription.
I was so happy with Roon that I decided to set up a Rock server so that it would always be on and I didn’t have to have it mingle with my use of my desktop PC. So I bought the NUC and an Akasa Turning FX. This morning I set up Rock and began the migration process. I don’t want the client on my desktop PC to remember the former Core; I just want it to be a client.
Your documents are very clear about the backup process but less clear about the restore process. I restored my backup (after struggling with the path name) but didn’t fully realize that there is one more step to complete the process – pointing the Rock to my NAS as a music source. I would have thought that would have been in the backup.
My humble recommendation is that you document this use case relatively explicitly. An overview would be fine with pointers to all of the subsidiary documents.
I suspect that I’ve lost some of the “learning” that my first two weeks amassed. I suspect that because I’m not 100% confident that I did everything just right to move from the first Core to my “permanent” Core on the Rock server. If everything didn’t move over, I can live with it. One reason I went to the expense of buying the hardware was that I felt it would be better to start fresh in a sense two weeks into my “Roon life” and build from there vs. go through this six months from now.
Anyway, I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. I’m excited by Roon and I’m glad that you have Rock and don’t require people to spend a bunch of money on your appliance. I’ve built a lot of computers over the years from motherboards and DIMMs, etc., and had fun doing this. It’s rewarding to get to the end in a few hours vs. many days. So I do appreciate that. I just think with a little more attention to some things that are obvious to you but not obvious to someone who is new to Roon and isn’t a Linux guru, your documentation would be that much better.