Big question - The new Mac Mini M4 is very fast and quiet. Is it still necessary to use a separate Bridge to get the best sound quality? This article says Roon Bridge is still necessary, not sure if the article has been updated recently
General
700 ripped albums with a total of 22,000 tracks
All music is stored on internal SSD
All computers are hardwired to ethernet switch
Current setup
Roon server - 2018 Mac Mini with 8GB ram
Roon bridge - 2012 Mac Mini with 16GB ram
Meridian Explorer DAC plugged connected via USB to Roon bridge feeding an Outlaw Audio receiver
Possible new setup1
Roon server â 2024 Mac Mini M4 with 16GB ram
Roon bridge - 2018 Mac Mini with 8GB ram
Meridian Explorer DAC plugged connected via USB to Roon bridge feeding an Outlaw Audio receiver
Possible new setup2
Roon server â 2024 Mac Mini M4 with 16GB ram
Meridian Explorer DAC plugged connected via USB to Roon server feeding an Outlaw Audio receiver
Itâs always been just a best practice recommendation to put a bridge or a streamer between server and DAC Ëfor maximum audio fidelity´, all the while catering to FOMO audiophiles believing in the high end audio press/influencer hype.
So, if using a competently designed USB input capable DAC you should be all fine to lean back and enjoy, as long as you donât hear any extra noises or dropouts unrelated to the music.
Why would a half-competent USB DAC, or even an absolute garbage one for that matter, care which Mac Mini it is attached to? Surely the USB ports on both Macs are equally capable.
Note: In this specific scenario the OP is simply talking about using one Mac Mini vs two. This isnât an argument for moving to a fan-less endpoint, boogieman AC noise over USB cables, or the quality of the soundcard on a 25-year-old tower PC running Windows 95.
If Roon Server is so resource heavy that it will drag a modern M4 Mini to itâs knees, to the point that it causes dropouts on the USB bus, then something needs fixing in Roon â btw. nothing I have seen or read suggests this is the case.
Sorry, have to call this âget the best sound quality from Roonâ FOMO FUD out for what it isâŚabsolute nonsense (in all but a few cases).
At best itâs a play-it-safe statement that means Roon doesnât have to directly deal with supporting USB attached DACs, user configuration and driver issues â and I can understand why they would do that as it reduces an already heavy support burden. At worst itâs a mealy-mouthed statement this simply helps promote audiophile myths and encourages users to buy unnecessary hardware out of FOMO.
If the M4 Mac Mini is in close proximity to your DAC, I would try a USB cable connection first. If that works well with no noise, youâre done.
If you get any audible noise with a direct USB connection, a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to your network by ethernet or WIFI can solve that. I know this from actual experience.
When away from home, I use my Dell XPS 15 as a Roon server. When I use USB directly to my Chord Mojo 2, I get audible noise. When I use WIFI to a RPi4 connected to the Mojo 2 with a USB cable, there is no noise.
My two current Mac Minis are about 15 feet from each other. The server is on a desk while the bridge is about 2 feet from my Outlaw audio receiver. The DAC is plugged into the bridge and then a 3 foot stereo audio cable goes from the DAC to the receiver
If I use only the new Mac Mini M4 then I would plug the DAC into it via USB and then run a 20 foot stereo audio cable from the DAC to the receiver
This isnât to start an argument, your postâs Jim are always very level headed.
But the question was whether there would be any benefit from using a separate Mac Mini running Roon Bridge vs connecting directly to a Mac Mini running Roon server and the answer is no. If anyone can prove otherwise and back that up with hard data letâs see it.
The DAC doesnât care what software the Mac Mini is running unless itâs casing the machine to fall over.
Now there are very good reasons to use a separate endpoint, lack of fan noise, not wanting a computer on display, wanting to support other protocols like AirPlay via the endpoint. But thatâs a different question.
Quite frankly if I paid $400 for a USB DAC and I could hear noise when I connected it to my PC it would be straight back in the box for a refund. Surely the whole point of a USB DAC is that you can connect it to your PC?
A new Mac Mini M4 has a fan but my understanding is unless you push it hard the fan wonât even spin up. My new Mini will only be used for light duty so fan noise shouldnât be an issue
I did not purchase a Chord Mojo 2 to connect directly to a computer. I purchased it for good SQ to my Focal Clear headphones. At home, the Mojo 2 is connected to an RPi4 that is connected by ethernet to my network. All is good for headphone listening in our family room. Nucleus is in another room.
Away from home, as already stated, I get noise from the Dell server USB connection. So, I use the RPi4 to solve this issue. Sometimes you just need to do what works.
PS: I get no audible noise when connecting the Mojo 2 to RPi4, iPhone, or two different iPads. The noise is an issue with the Dell USB. No noise when I connected to Dell HDMI.
It doesnât unless you have a problem such as I talked about above. You donât need a bridge unless you need one. A lot of people just want their Roon server in another room, totally away from their music system.
The location of your server depends much on itâs design, initially I used a Desktop it sounded a bit like tractor so having it close to the listening spot was out. So my setup was PC>Ethernet>Rpi4>DAC
I later moved to a NUC/ROCK which simply replaced the PC but the same downstream setup
Later still I invested in Naim Uniti Atom HE (I AM 100% Headphones) so the set up is now simplified
NUC > Ethernet > Naim
You will only need a bridge if your DAC doesnât have an ethernet input
I think you shouldnât use any computer, like Mac or PC, as Roon Bridge.
The whole point of Bridge is to separate very noisy computer from the DAC, at least one of the main jobs. Get some dedicated streamer thats Roon Ready and put linear PSU to it. It should be much better than any Mac.
Unless a fan has bad bearings, or you have a very clicky HDD, computers arenât very noisy, problem is usually with trying to use a badly made DAC that does not have proper filtering.
Nope, its not that simple. Regular computers are like 100x more noiser that a dedicated streamer, which is also a computer btw, but special attention was given to the overall noise.
Just some expensive DACs have full galvanic isolation. On RME DAC I could hear CPU and mouse hi freq noise, it was that bad (my current Holo DAC has optical galvanic isolation, fixed all that hum and noise). Not to mention what those hight harmonics do to the audible spectrum⌠I ABX tested laptop vs. Raspberry Pi with LPSU, and difference was audible! With Roon its relatively easy to play into many different Edge/Bridge devices at once, so you can switch quickly.
Its relatively old budget DAC, just use it with PC or Mac, think its not worth investing into dedicated Bridge device, unless you need to have it separate from computer, then just get the cheapest streamer that supports Roon Ready. Then upgrade DAC, donât worry about sound quality of the streamer, thats not the bottleneck here.
The Explorer had great reviews when it came out in a number of publications, two I linked to. What does a new DAC get me that the Explorer does not have? I know that direct DSD playback is one thing but still undecided whether that will improve sound quality.
If youâre having noise âpropagationâ issues with a USB D/A solution, the solution is bad or the system is bad. Some of this can be worked around with an Intona but I would recommend addressing the root problem.
Obviously, any endpoint that has a fan is somewhat no bueno for a listening environment so thatâs a big factor and a compelling reason to separate this.
Thereâs also some convenience and a separation of concerns that comes from having an endpoint decoupled from your server.
I havenât had a âphysical audio deviceâ attached to any of my workstations or video renderers or servers for a very long time so Iâm definitely a fan of separating the two. (I do AoIP for the real time stuff)
Obviously you could have a bad USB port that is âtoo noisyâ but barring that, if a USB DAC is sensitive to within-spec USB signal, that DAC is badly designed. FWIW, I have ML 5909 headphones (that should be sufficiently high-end for anyone) that can be connected via USB. No noise from any computer I plugged them into. And external USB sound card? No noise. My only USB-connected Roon endpoint, a cheap Chinese all-in-one mini-PC slightly larger than a cigarette pack, with a touchscreen and all â if anything were âtoo noisyâ that would be it â plugged into a USB DAC/Amp. No noise at all, even when the volume is turned up to maximum.
A lot of people just want their Roon server in another room, totally away from their music system.