Roon and UDOO X86 ADVANCED PLUS

Roon Software Discussion
1

Hi,
a newbie here but very interested, and have a question.
Will Roon Core perform well on a UDOO X86 ADVANCED PLUS with a M.2 SSD Transcend MTS600 (128GB) card attached ?
I have approx 3 TB of music on a Qnap NAS (that is not up to spec for Roon Core) and would like to use the UDOO as the Core server.
Is this doable ? or what would be the most cost effective solution (before upgrading to QNAP TVxxx) ?

Many thanks to all
Stefano

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Plus 1 here as well

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To begin to help you determine that, we would need to know, how many tracks? how much growth in the next couple of years? How many different endpoint will the core be streaming to? If more than one are you going to do grouping? Is the core going to do any DSD to PCM conversion? Is this just to get started solution or a “I want something that will last” awhile. If the later, keep in mind that Roon is a growing entity and it may be that even more, potentially power hungry, features may be added in the future.

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Hi Daniel,
I have 3,05TB of music, in 5,200+ folders and 74,000+ files.
Predominant format is Flac transcoded on the fly to Wav, including hires, and native DSD.
The Core would stream to one location/end-point (not a multi-room arch.).
I would like to try out Roon before committing to a more costly solution but given that my Qnap is not up to it (TS-469L) I was looking for a fairly low-cost solution, and hence the only one board pc that I found with enough CPU, Ram and SSD to run the Core, but I would expect it to last awhile as it does comply to the NAS requirements Roon sets out.
My music library will continue to grow, in particular in the hires and DSD space.

Thanks for your help !
Stefano

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Anybody able to advise ?

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https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_What_are_the_minimum_requirements%3F#Recommended_Hardware[quote=“StefanoB, post:1, topic:16893”]
UDOO X86 ADVANCED PLUS
[/quote]

Personally, I think you are overestimating what the UDOO board will be capable of, even given the size of your library now. The UDOO has an Intel Celeron N3160 (with a Passmark rating of 1,637). Roon Labs state that the recommended minimum CPU is an Intel Core i3, Ivy Bridge generation or later. The entry-level Core i3-3220T Ivy Bridge CPU has a Passmark rating of 3,697, already more than twice the Celeron in the UDOO board.

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Also it is worth noting that for a library over 24000 tracks sonictransporter recommends an i5 based model.

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Please note that there are no NAS requirements set out by Roon. RoonServer for Linux basically runs on any X86 architecture – it could run on your fridge if it meets the specifications.

‘Official’ recommendations are: at least an i3, preferably an i5, for extremely large collections (think hundreds of thousands of tracks) an i7, database on SSD. A NUCi5 running a minimal, headless Linux is a low-energy, high performance, low maintenance point of reference. Similarly specced NASses tend to be far more expensive.

While RoonServer will run on the UDOO board you mention, it sports a Celeron CPU that is below the recommended specs and has some architectural challenges (mainly a lack of cache memory). As some users appear to be happy running on low-specced NASses, Roon is not in the business of blocking installs on machines that do not meet the desired specs, but your mileage is very much related to your tolerance for slow(er) performance. Also: @Rugby’s comment after future Roon functionality adding extra demands is something to keep in mind.

For trying out Roon, you can just install RoonServer on any PC/Mac of choice and move it later. If you’d like to try out Roonserver for Linux, you could in stall a Virtualbox VM (there’s even a ready-to-run DietPi image available).

1 Like
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Thanks to all for the replies.
for the NAS, I was refering to the following Roon Knowledge Base article https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Server_on_NAS where it states the “ideal NAS configuration for Roon”.
However, if I do go down the Roon route I will probably get a dedicated server, such an a sT i7 and a dedicated Roon enabled renderer (like mR or SOtM sMS-200); my queries here were more for a low cost but up to spec try.
Seems like a great product, can’t wait to try it.

1 Like
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Be forewarned: it’s quite addictive!

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so I’ve read :slight_smile:

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I backed one the the Udoo Advanced board myself. Testing it with Roon is probably one of the first things I’ll do. :slight_smile:
(Once they have competed their board layout and solved the current occurring issues).

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The lower boards make sense, but the more advanced ones make no sense at all. for $3 more than the Ultra, you can get a NUC with 6th generation i3. That’s without ram however, so you have to add $45 for 8GB 
 still, you are getting like 10x the machine.

1 Like