ROCK on a Celeron - As an Endpoint

Can I use my ROCK as a 5.1 ENDPOINT and view and control Roon via a touchscreen… so I get the display like the apps do?

I have seen posts that suggest using a Celeron with ROCK as a endpoint, but I have not seen any directions on how to do it.

ROCK is a dumb server. You can connect a DAC to it but will need to use another device for control. A Ropieee endpoint with a screen can stop and start tracks but to select tracks you still need a controller.

It looks like you can now buy a Chromecast for $19.99. The display it provides is not the same as what you seen in the aps though, but it may be adequate for your use case. Note: Roon’s Displays feature is non-interactive…it has no playback control functionality.


More info about this here: https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/displays

As far as getting your Touchscreen to work, I guess it depends on which Touchscreen. Is this for an RPi, Windows computer or something else?

On the subject of this thread, I don’t think ROCK is actually supported on a Celeron. Perhaps this should be moved to the “Mock” area, except that this is not really talking about Mock either…

Hmmm, ROCK stands for Roon Optimized Core Kit. It’s a combination of supported Intel NUC hardware and Roon OS, a minimal Linux-based OS that was built from the ground up to run Roon Server, which is Roon’s best implementation of Core. It’s not an endpoint solution.

I’m not aware of a great Linux solution for 5.1 audio over HDMI. Whenever I try, I always end up with messed up channel mapping, etc. I’ve not tried it, but I wonder if LibreELEC on Raspberry Pi does HDMI audio properly. I imagine so, since it can be used to run Kodi and watch movies with multi-channel audio. :slight_smile: If I decide to give this a try, I’ll let you know how it goes.

For now, I would suggest using Windows 10 + Roon Bridge + Fidelizer Pro to build a dedicated multi-channel Roon endpoint.

Thanks i will try that… I was trying to have it be more like an appliance, and I hate Win10s updates, as they always manage to mess something up. I have a 7i5BNH on the way and a 7i7BNH with windows 10 currently. The posts i had seen before were saying to use Rock as an endpoint on a Celeron. My Celeron has 2 HDMIs and my BNHs both only have 1 HDMI, and I need a HDMI for my touchscreen, and some people said you have to plug th HDMI in to your AVP to get the 5.1 to popup. I wish I still had a copy of Win 7, so I could avoid the constant updates, and that would run nicely on a Celeron Endpoint.

Celerons are not supported hardware for Roon Cores. A Roon Core might run on one, but don’t expect great performance or support if performance is not great.

As an endpoint only Rock will work fine on Celeron. You can install Rock on it but don’t login to set up the server instal and leave it. Run core on something more suitable. Then rock will show up as a device to play in audio devices to which you control via any other Roon remote. I have had rock on an Atom based NuC thin client thats and it works perfectly fine to feed a DAC as it’s not running any core duties no issues with performance for audio playback .

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Yes, I’ve also installed on a small Zotac with Celeron Rock as a endpoint for using HDMI in multichannel and without using the server, you don’t will have problems.
Touchscreen is not supported (at the moment), but perhaps in Rock 2.0 there will change something (video output through HDMI).

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I use a NUC with an Intel Celeron N3150 1.6 Ghz and an installation of ROCK as an endpoint, which is then connected to the DAC via USB. My Roon server is installed on another NUCK. (Intel i5). This holds the Roon database, which has been working very well for three years.

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I used a Celeron NUC as an endpoint running ROCK for a while. Pretty easy, just have to remember which core is which.

One day I needed to reinstall the is on the windows machine that I had Roon on and used the Celeron as my core temporarily, figuring it would be ok for a few days.

A year later, I never moved my core back to the windows machine. Runs fine on the Celeron NUC, even with DSP, upsampling and multiple endpoints playing at once. (Maybe not upsampling and multiple endpoints playing at once)

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Thank you, I sure hope touchscreen is supported soon. I am making a all in one Rock Server, Plex Server, and Rock as a endpoint (3NUCs), and I def need the touch screen to view my selections on the Rock Endpoint (being able to select with the touchscreen would be a big plus). I guess for the now I can just use HDMI 2 for the touchscreen so at least I can see what track is playing in the rack from my seat.

You can name the cores appropriately can’t you?

Thank you, exactly what I want to do.

Thank you, now I know how to make Rock a endpoint.

Yes. Tho I just worked out which was which.

Is there a chance to run Roon Rock on a QNAP Celeron based NAS like HS-251+ ?

In container station perhaps you could, but whether it works or not ? For Roon core it would be woefully underpowered

This is an interesting solution. This is not an officially supported configuration or use case for Roon OS, but if it works and solves a problem, why not?

Personally, I would rather see RoPieee support multichannel audio since it already has a working touchscreen. I think the current problems with channel mapping have to do with the Linux kernel on ARM hardware, but I’m fuzzy on the details.

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Ropieee has no support for HDMI audio at all and I don’t think, that this will change in the future.
But on another system, I’m using Picoreplayer (not the newest one) and there (many years ago, I’ve supported the developer in this) HDMI audio is possible until eight channels with 24/192.
Also you can find for Picoreplayer a repository with the Roon Bridge and for me it works without problem in multichannel.
So it’s not a problem in ARM, but in the kernel configuration (also in Linux).

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