Roon 2.0 - Any way to run it on an unsupported Mac OS?

I rip CDs and SACDs, download purchases, and curate my local music library on a 2010 mac pro. This machine is still fantastic, frankly, but the latest macOS it supports is Mojave. My core runs on ROCK on a NUC10i7.

I would like to run Roon 2.0 on my mac pro somehow, not to play music but to tweak and curate my library. I subscribe to both Tidal and Qobuz so “Group Duplicates” is something I do a lot.

I tried installing Roon 2.0 using Wine but that did not work. I have not tried Crossover, Virtualbox, or Parallels.

If you have tried Crossover/Virtualbox/Parallels to run Roon 2.0 Windows, I would like to know your experience and whether it works.

@miguelito

I encountered the same problem. The solution was, to my surprise, update my old Mac to OSX Catalina. I thought that it was not possible but then I googled for “patched Catalina”. It works for my MacBook Air 2011, maybe it helps you too.

Good Luck.

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Thank you. Yes, I know about this method though I am a bit reluctant to use it. I will consider it.

Moved to Tinkering section as I believe that is the better fit for this type of query.

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As long as you have a backup, don’t worry. Do a full Time Machine and try DOSDudes’s patch or OCLP. If anything goes wrong, you can always restore your backup. You only have time to loose, but at the same time you can use it as a learning experience.

There’s loads of guides and videos, and we can always help should you get stuck.

A Time Machine Backup will address the problem of an OS that has been corrupted thru experimentation, but I hope @miguelito knows that Roon’s database can not be dependably Restored from Time Machine.

Understood, but my Roon Core is not on this machine but on a NUC10i7 running ROCK.

Also, I should add that Mojave has been very robust for me and it’s also the last version where I can run 32bit apps - Oxford English Dictionary is one such app and I would rather keep running that than Roon. Sorry, forgot to clarify that…

Ah then that would limit you somewhat.

Maybe it’s time to just move on and upgrade, there’s no point staying behind the times as it’s just makes things difficult.

Why not keep this Mac as a spare, for when you need it. And treat yourself to a newer one? It doesn’t need to be all singing and dancing…

My daily is a 2018 MacMini.

But, you could pick up M1 Mac Mini’s rather cheap now at around £550/$600.

I do have an M1 macbook pro, it’s just not the machine with 18TB of disk space that my workhorse mac pro is. I think I might try Parallels… Just a pain to set up.

Has anyone run Roon 2.0 on Parallels here?

It helps if you add all this to the post, I look silly now. :joy:

Sorry! I just wanted to keep it focused and not have people tell me how much they like to use Roon on the great screen of the mbp! :slight_smile:

I imagine that people might have tried running Roon core on Parallels as the mac version of it has traditionally been compromised (because of mono).

Just created a new thread I think that’s clearer.

Thx for the help.

I agree with Miguel - It is irksome that Roon isn’t supporting the older OS.

My core is on a Small Green Computer system, but my interface for downloading CDs and the huge SSDs are on an iMac that can’t be upgraded to the supported OS’s.
It was a great use for the old machines that have a CD drive, easy means/space for mounting 2 internal SSD’s …
Is there a work-around that allows Roon 2.0 to run on HighSierra or Mojave??

Roon 2.0 now no longer depends on mono:

Welcome to Roon 2.0!:

The change to .Net is also the reason for dropping support for older MacOS versions:

grafik

Stick with Roon 1.8 (and mono) or get creative (run in VM, … ?) like the OP of this thread.

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My condolences on you having been tricked into buying a NUC. On paper it make look like a real computer but it isn’t. It’s a cute toy. I would not wish a NUC on Vladimer Putin. They never perform anywhere near that of the desktop system they are tricking into thinking it is but in a small package, nope, the i/o is so poor on these NUCs.

I have updated my Macbook Pro 8,1 (from 2011) with macOS 10.13.6 (High Sierra) to macOS 11.7 (Big Sur) with the Open Core Legacy Patcher
Now Roon 2.0 is running as an endpoint on it. :clap:

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NUC dedicated to Roon via ROCK works amazingly well.

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This won’t work for me as I want to be able to use a few legacy 32bit apps - especially Oxford English Dictionary.

I would not run a core on a VM or some similar relatively fragile setup. Clients ok.

I too have had a 2010 Mac Pro which I bought second hand in 2012 and pimped it up with faster dual CPUs, more RAM and SSD boot drive. it’s been s great desktop machine and I’ve had Roon Core running on it without an issue, other than having to have the machine on. I swapped over to an SSD on my Syno NAS and that also works well.

Sadly my Mac Pro finally karked it a couple of months ago I wanted to patch Catalina on it, but I had problems with the graphics card and there were one or two other problems. So, I now have a base model Mac Studio, which is great. Still have Roon on the NAS for the time being and I was doing a little bit of beta testing for v2.0 and ARC, all good.