Roon Client/Server - Best Practice?

Thanks Rik. I use a firewire DAC (Weiss DAC2) - do you know if this would have the same issues?

Also, what is the radius of influence of this EM/RF noise? I.e. how far away from the DAC would I need to place the music PC?

I was also wondering which components in the DAC this EM/RF affects?

EM/RF can affect just about any component - try putting a mobile phone on top of a preamp & phoning it (With the volume LOW).

You should be in a much better place with Firewire though as cable run can be very long, ob a different room (or even floor) is quite possible, Also a Firewire actually negotiates power requirements at initiation you should be a lot better isolated at the physical connection end too.

Rik

How about one of these - would this work (works fine powering Logitech Media Server v7.9) :-

ReadyNAS Ultra 4
IntelÂź Atom Dual-core CPU (Ultra 4 Plus)
1GB DDR2 SODIMM [potentially upgradeable to 4GB]
Two (2) 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports
Three (3) USB 2.0 ports
Embedded 128 MB Flash Memory for OS

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Actually, the 213+ is more than a simple file server. I just downloaded/transcoded a high res version of Aqualung to my iPhone while on the subway.

It also serves video to my Samsung TV and a Roku. It runs minimserver sending hi res to my beagle bone black and runs a two camera home security system I can access remotely.

Room has the potential to be a ground breaking product. But given the disdain for using it in it’s current form (noisy computer connected to a DAC for hi res) it is high on potential but low on being consumer friendly.

I encourage Roon to allow for renewed trials as the promised missing parts arrive.

Hello,

I’m new around here, but came across this thread. I’ve been playing with computers as audio streamers for the last 7 - 8 years.

My experience with computers and high end audio equipment is that the issues with computers are two fold. They throw out a lot of RFI into the atmosphere (though they are getting better in this respect) and they have very noisy power supplies (which don’t seem to be improving). I have used a number of computers from laptops, to dedicated audio computers (DIY) which use fanless PSU’s, to NUC’s, and one of the biggest problems is earth line based noise. Simply put, PSU designers with computers are lazy, so they basically dump the noise from the systems power supplies straight to earth, as a result the moment the computer starts to do a modicum of work, you get noise on the earth lines and that goes straight into your audio circuits via the amps.

One way around this in the USA is to use experiment with cheater plugs which allow you to lift the earth line, this will give you a very quick (and cheap) reality check as to whether you have a noise problem with your earth lines. If you’re going to have a computer in the listening room, and it’s not a laptop running off batteries, then you also might want to look at some kind of mains filtration for your other audio components, especially if they use linear power supplies rather than switch mode power supplies. I have noticed that the likes of Chord power amps don’t seem to suffer from these problems, but then again their amps are ferociously expensive and well beyond the means of most. In the UK I know the use of anything which breaks earth is frowned upon, but one really quick way to check is to buy an extension chord, and simply lift the earth at the plug end and see if that improves matters.

My long term plan is to use an Intel NUC as my client device in the listening room, I’ll probably go with the more powerful i5 based device as I’ll want this to deliver video to my screen in the room also, but you could easily use the cheaper entry level model for audio only, even if you do plan to use DSD in the future, and have the core server part on a stand alone machine in another part of the house with my NAS, keeping the spinning disks and fans outside the listening and viewing rooms. The final thing I’ll mention is networking, don’t skimp here. I would always suggest going with a good network switch (HP or similar calibre) and use CAT6 network cables at least, even CAT 7 (which are fully shielded and should only cost a little more than decent CAT 6). If you are thinking of wiring your home, then again don’t skimp, use CAT 7, you may not need 10 GB/s speed, but you have expansion potential built in, and the shielding will prevent noise, not only from getting in, but from getting out also, and DO NOT use Wi-Fi for audio. It can, technically, be done, but I have always found a hard wired ethernet connection to be preferable from both a reliability and sound quality perspective. As a someone who works in IT (and has done for the last 30 years) I would really like to give conclusive evidence as to why this is, as even 802.11G Wi-Fi has plenty of bandwidth to handle 96/24 high resolution audio, yet even with 44.1/16 CD quality audio, when it’s streaming from the NAS it just doesn’t sound as focussed, and then possible Wi-Fi dropouts, even one or two a day, really spoil the dependability factor for me.

I hope these random musings might help someone here, if you have any questions on anything I’ve said then please don’t hesitate to ask and I’ll try to help.

Dave

Hello,

Whilst I have little experience with Roon at present (I’m planning on spending much more time over the next week or so) I can tell you that based on what I’ve read and know about Roon, you will be disappointed with using these NAS’s for this purpose.

What you’re doing is virtualising the Windows operating system onto another processor, and in this case you’re doing type 2 virtualisation, which is running Windows on top of the Linux core of most of these NAS’s, and the CPU’s on these NAS’s are not really powerful enough to do this. I would recommend an i5 based system to run the Roon core, then use something simpler near the DAC if required. I would also try to keep the core out of the listening room, likewise the spinning disks. I would definitely declare the listening room a spinning disk free zone, use SSD’s for computers in the listening room, then you can have your bulk storage elsewhere in the house where noise isn’t as big an issue.

Regarding using the likes of a Raspberry PI for audio, make it a Pi 2, the original had an issue with high res audio streaming (it simply wasn’t powerful enough to move the data around), but that would make a great low power streamer, but for me it’s the switch mode power supply for the Pi that’s the issue. I have thought that using one of these large tablet / mobile phone portable charging units made for camping, where you have a large lithium Ion battery which you charge at home, and holds enough power to recharge phones and tablets whilst you’re away, might be used to power a Pi during a listening session on it’s micro USB connector, then simply charge the power bank whilst you’re not listening, that way you break the Pi from the mains supply and you don’t need an electrically noisy switch mode wall wart pumping noise into your audio systems power supplies whilst listening. The supplies are cheap and I would have thought a 20,000 mah supply would power a Pi through most listening sessions. It’s something well worth looking at if you’re leaning to using something like that, and it removes a whole lot of mains noise problems in one go for very little outlay.

I hope this helps.

Dave

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there’s a system that already does this, called a squeezebox. :wink:

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@Rik You can have powerless USBs in PCs. There are add-in cards and even some motherboards built just to isolate a specific non-powered USB data path from electrical interference, just for high end audio.

@woodford Yes, it is interesting how much the industry is trying to rebuild what slimserver/squeezebox had. The slimserver DACs topped at 24/96 but I think you could still put them in bridge mode. I would love to use mine with Roon.

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@extracampine

I took delivery of this PC today which I ordered for my dad: - It would be a great machine for a listening room - Could easily be built into a table. (It might take me a little longer than expected to setup)
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-2350-aio/pd?oc=cd23507

I don’t know how my hyperlink looks so good!

I thought of you!

Cheers
Tom

@gmt if I did not already own an iPad, I would have gone the All-in-One PC route. I was looking at an HP 21.5" touch screen A-I-O for $400 or so
The Dell looks nice


Couldn’t resist setting up Roon last night on the big touch screen. Superb. A friend came over and he was hooked,.by 1am he was ready to buy Roon, PC and a tidal subscription. He was also excited about Apple TV support. I think Roon speakers is going to really make the product a success if promoted correctly.

Big screen = Much better than tablet! (In my changed opinion!)

Cheers

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Is there a possibility to use a PC (Windows 7 or 8) as a remote client to a Roon Server (Mac mini i7 2012)? And does the (remote) PC have to conform the OpenGL 3.0 standard? So can I use any (older) PC as a remote to the Roon Server?

Pieter

You can mix and match all OS types (OS X, Windows, Android and soon iOS). For now, both the server and the remote must conform to OpenGL 3 to run Roon.

There’s a headless server/core version in development that will most probably not require OpenGL as it won’t have to display graphics. Remotes will have to support OpenGL 3 though.

What @RBM said :slight_smile:

With Roon Core and Roon Remote, it appears (watching Task Mgr) Core is doing all of the work, and the Remote Roon is just a pass-through to your Endpoint.

@brian @danny As some (a lot?) of us computer users tweak their OS and processes, it seems most of this (all of it?) should be on the Core. If Remote is just a pass-through, then less optimization may need to be done.

A little more info on Core -> Remote would be great to know.

All file decoding occurs on the core. The bits are then transmitted to the remote, either in their original format or processed (if you have volume normalization or crossfade enabled). The remote owns the audio clock and has a fairly large (multi-second) buffer that fully isolates it from timing characteristics of the server.

The remote handles all compatibility-oriented conversions itself (e.g. converting to a sample rate compatible with your DAC, converting DSD to PCM for playback on PCM DACs, etc).

If your DAC fully supports the source material, then the remote is just a passthrough.

Some of this is in flux as we make RoonSpeakers more mature. We will eventually need to support endpoints that don’t have the horsepower to do, for example, DSD256 to 88.2k PCM conversion in software, which would require us to create a mechanism for doing that sort of work in the Core. Today, playing high-rate DSD on anything but a bleeding edge android tablet is dicey–the conversions use a lot of CPU. There are also some reliability benefits to reducing network bandwidth for cases like this.

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Excellent response
Thanks


This all makes sense to me from what I was seeing on my setup.

Hi all.

Just need some help with setting up a Remote for a bedroom headphone/speaker setup and having issues finding a suitable tablet. Have tried a few and all have been limited due to specs needed, but found one that I think will work perfectly
Lenovo Tab 2 10 -70. Meets all spec minimums and at a great price.

With Roon Speakers will it matter what processor I use as a remote (ARM vs Intel). Confused as to what is needed now and what might be needed in the near future as I could open up better and cheaper possibilities as remotes
(read about using old phones and tablets at some point) in another thread that obviously won’t upgrade to 4.4 without rooting.

Any help would be fanastic.

Hamilton

So it seems here that the “best practice” of setting roon up is similar to a Jplay dual pc setup if i understand correctly?

We use a “control PC” that is usually specced quite high which houses the music files, does all the web streaming etc and then connects via ethernet to the “audio PC” which is normally a lower spec which strictly handles the audio to the dac.

is that how this software basically works?

It was said that the core server are better to be far away from the dac, but with a switch inbetween the server and client plus a whole bunch of methods to reduce EMI is that sufficient to get optimal sound with roon if both computers are right there in the room?

Also, does the client need to have internet access or does the server send all the required data to the client?

my preference would be to have the server and client on a separate segregated subnet if possible.

Also, if i wanted to use a remote app like splashtop streamer, does that connect to the client or the server?