I’m curious, the users who use Linux or Rock that say the sq has improved over say using Mac osx, was the roon server hooked up to your dac by usb or did you have the server in a different room communicating by Ethernet?
I haven’t used Rock, but when I compared running Roon on Mac osx vs Roon on Ubuntu, on a server in another room, using Ethernet to the dac, I heard no sq differences. I have a couple of audio club friends that bought the nucleus and they heard no difference in sq compared to their prior Roon server, their main reason to buy the nucleus was to quit maintaining a computer themselves.
Personally if you are using it to stream to a network endpoint directly from Roon and not upsampling I would not believe that there would be any difference, as long as the machine is fast enough to the the processing (and it is bit perfect).
If using something like USB output and potentially other software settings then it isn’t an apple’s to apple’s comparison
I have personally run Roon on Rock, DietPi, Window’s, Mac OS and Synology and found no SQ differences. I had other differences in usability and speed of processing but the music all sounded exactly the same to me.
So all in all, what’s the consensus? I’m about to buy a Mac mini m4 16gb as dedicated server but is it a good thing to do? My endpoint is a BlueSound Node to a Simaudio moon 340i+DAC
I was quite tempted to order a M4 Pro to replace my M1 as a HQPlayer server, but the price rises are insane and it was more than 3x the cost of the basic M4, which is definitely the sweet spot.
Personally I am a happy DietPi Linux user, but I feel you will be very happy with your purchase
I e been running Roon on older Mac mini’s (2012 models a few years ago) to a 2022 m1 Mac mini with 16g ram, 512g ssd, hub underneath that holds both a 4TB for music and 1TB nvme m.2 stick. You can’t beat the Mx cpus, my m1 is way overkill for Roon and I have hundreds of thousands of track and qobuz subscription. Also runs Roon arc for the cars.
The Mac mini also has an 8TB hdd for backups. I have a Mac mini m2 with the same hub and solid state storage in it.
I was thinking of doing another experiment with Roon running on Linux on a trash can Mac Pro, 6 cores, 64g ram, but with others claiming no difference in sq between the OS’s, I’ll keep it on the mini. Never have any problems and it is very quick. 4Trillion ops should be enough to read a music file and send it out on the network
As I described in detail in the original posting, all Roon servers were plugged to the LAN connection driving dCS Rossini Apex network DAC. I found the SQ difference was clear, especially with the Mac OS. Trust me, I really hoped that there was no difference so I could get this factor out of the equation.
Everyone, please do not make your speculative opinion without direct experience (“there should be no difference” etc.). Only provide your verdict based on first-hand A/B comparison.
As in my original posting, I don’t recommend Mac OS as a dedicated Roon server. In particular, MacMini M4 machine as a dedicated Roon server seems an overkill, as there are many barebone NUCs that can be purchased for much cheaper.
As I said in the original posting, I find Linux on a trash can MacPro sound better than Mac OS server. I’m currently using the trash can Linux server. It’s performance with 130k tracks is better than that with the ROCK NUC7i5, but it is still slow. My new project is to build an AMD-based ROCK server now.
If Roon sounds better on Linux, It’s not because of Apple’s hardware or software because audirvana sounds better on a Mac than Linux and IMO, audirvana’s sq is a little better than Roon. I prefer the gui of Roon over audirvana (plus I use Roon arc daily), but the future might change things: Audirvana might get better on Linux and Roon might get better on a Mac, if it’s worse now.
I used Audirvana before I switched to Roon, so I’m familiar with it. I was so relieved to jump off the (sinking) ship around the time the incredibly buggy Audirvana 2.0 was released. God I hated the amateurish one-man band software company with zero tech support - completely unprofessional and unacceptable business model.
Audirvana was originally developed on Mac platform, which probably explains why it works better on Macs. Likewise, Roon/ROCK is built on Linux so probably it works better as such.
I have absolutely no doubt that there are no fundamental flaws in either Mac or Windows or Linux OS. Maybe it’s just some subtle conversion of algorithms that overlook the sonic aspects (maybe jitter?).
I bit the bullet and did a year of Audirvana Studio sub what a mess, it doesn’t even sort Artists properly unless you specifically set [ArtistSort] accordingly , I have to look in 6 places to get a full view of Alfred Brendel. What a mistaka to maka
Out of interest on Windows 10 - Naim Uniti Atom HE - Sennheiser HD800 I couldn’t spot a SQ improvement , but the interface was so much a downer maybe I didn’t persevere
I did this experiment and was underwhelmed by its performance.
The Trashcan is now running Kubuntu and it’s performance is not bad, but as a Roon server it was far less performant than my i5 10th gen Nuc and the M1 Mac. The Nuc has slightly more performance due to having more cores which improves searching speed, but I am guessing even a basic M4 would now beat them all.
It’s a pity that there’s such a big price differential between the M4 and M4 Pro variants of the Mini
(Having gone back and forth between the three devices for several weeks of testing and listening I heard no SQ difference, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe other people don’t hear a difference in SQ)
A basic m1 Mac of any Apple computer would wipe the floor against any Intel chip. AMD is the closest competitor to Apple now, maybe the Qualcomm cpus.
But it’s not performance that makes a Roon server great sounding unless you’re swapping or performing Roon overhead while playing music. If I was running Roon on an older computer with Intel chips, I would run Linux because Linux is so efficient, it can make an old slow computer run much faster.
I’ve done a comparison of the M4/125H/155H/100U (most poular NUC CPUs) and the M4 comes out very strong. As for price/performance ratio the M4 Mini also is strong, esp. when inclusing additional costs for SSD/RAM on the NUC (and life-time support/updates for the Mini). I’ve raised a ticket with Roon’s support as to there should be a SQ difference as some suggest here.
I ran roon server on a m1 mac mini for a while (16 GB RAM, 1 TB HD, attached SSD for backups) and it was fast (importing/analysing new FLACs was v fast, the roon client interface on devices like laptop, ipad, was snappy). Ultimately though I went back to my (now getting old) NUC because maintaining the mac mini was getting to be a pain in the neck. The NUC is a 8i7 model with 32GB of RAM, a 512GB nvme drive for the OS, a 4TB 2.5” SSD internal drive for music, and a 4TB external SSD for roon backups.
After MacOS updates, some roon things didn’t work until I logged into the mac mini over VNC and approved security dialog boxes. Then fine until some other update and same thing. Also I found relatively often (once or twice a month?) I would have to reboot the mac mini because roon was unhappy about something.
The NUC/ROCK solution is just so much easier, as an appliance model. It does have a fan and is noisy compared to the silent mac mini m1 … but it’s located in a basement utility closet so it really doesn’t matter.
I didn’t notice any SQ difference between the NUC and the mac mini … but I also didn’t do any proper A/B testing so YMMV.
I love my M1 Mac Mini, but it just wasn’t faster for running Roon than my NUC 10. I assume it’s due to only having only 4 performance chores. They may be much faster individually, but I found Roon’s multi threaded searches on Linux using 8 core’s to be faster (everything else ran about the same). Now for anything but Roon I agree and I move between Windows, Linux and Mac everyday so I am fairly agnostic. The power performance ratio of the Mx range of Macs is great and the basic Mini as a marvel at the price. I can’t wait until it can natively run Linux (and one day hopefully Roon).
I have no doubt that an M4 would make a difference with an extra core and the top of the range Mini with the top pro chip, would be a much better buy than a Titan to my mind at about half the price. That would be a sweet machine for me to run Roon and HQPLAYER together on. Just wait to see when the next Studio with the ultra’s are released at probably the same price as the Titan
