Roon Core for iPadOS?

I would love to be able to run Roon on a battery operated iPad Pro.

With the new file system coming on the iPad, I wonder if this is a possibility.

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Do you mean as an endpoint or as a server?

As a server.Maybe a stripped down server version.

I very much doubt it. Would you like this moved to the Feature Request section?

The iPads certainly have the raw computing power to run as a server. But the links and design may preclude such a thing.

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iPads don’t have storage for a music library. If they were operating as a Roon Core they would be pulling music from storage or Internet streaming, while pushing to an Output at the same time. WiFi is not full duplex and cannot do this in real time. There will always be dropouts and performance issues.

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You can store a tb on the ipad itself and Apple will be allowing usb thumb drives to directly connect.

Oh well you would know best if there would be performance issues.

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iPad Pro now has USB C connection with enough bandwidth to connect a USB hard drive, and an ethernet connection using a dock.

Besides, with iPadOS you can connect a hard drive and read many more file types than just photos. I would make my life so simple if the iPad Pro could be used as both server and client

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I had no idea IPads came with the option for so much storage - my music collection is never going to be close to a TB.

Would love this option although I’m a ‘lite’ user I guess as I tend to play to one end point at a time and don’t use any of the sound enhancement features, so I don’t need the sort of performance others would want.

Well a TB is enough for a very decent local library, but streaming content would still need to go both ways at once.

Tethering the iPad with a USB to Ethernet converter would solve that issue; but who wants a tethered iPad ? I much prefer to have an Ethernet connected server run Roon Core and use a WiFi iPad for Control.

Another thing that was announced coming in iOS13 is being able to plug in a USB storage device and have it show up in the Files app, where you can copy stuff to say iCloud. This is big, and would possibly make playing from external drives possible.

Getting music from the cloud and playing it on a wirelessly connected core sounds like potential for a lot of problems.
On the other hand, how are you going to get mobile to work? It has many of the same elements…
At least the iPadPro has the muscle to handle a core’s duties.

Me neither, I expect your wallet has blanked out its existance; have you seen the price! :slight_smile:

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(I am not closely involved, but this is my distant understanding.)

Devices like iPads (and phones) are designed to optimize battery life. The hardware includes specialized coprocessors and both high-speed and low-cost cores, and the OS is intelligently shifts work around. For example, music play (iOS music play) doesn’t involve the CPU at all, same with phone calls. It’s very effective. But this goes against the mindset of a server. And sure enough, there are rules for the App Store on how an app is allowed to work.

I don’t think an iPad server can happen.

(PCs have logic to efficiently use the hardware as well, but much less extreme, and server apps are allowed. Windows 8 attempted to move Windows to an iOS style model, and as you recall there was an uproar…)

The storage upgrade of the iPad pro from 256GB to 1TB cost much more than a NUC with 1TB storage.
And even the a i3 NUC would most likely be is a lot faster than the iPad Pro mainly because of TDP.
So why even consider this?

It would be harder traveling with a NUC for one and most people opt for 256gb iPads.
You could use a Surface Pro though for portability .

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This. Any decent spec’d Windows tablet will do the job of a Core pretty comfortably if that is the aim.

Love to see how well an iPad cope with DSP and upsampling. Not I would imagine.

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The A12X processors benchmark right up with the Intel chips used in MacBook Pros. That being said, the remaining hardware isn’t designed with server use in mind. The processor would handle DSP just fine I expect.

Geek bench score is not equal to real world performance it is only a meassure or peak performance.
The A12 will throttle much sooner than a NUC because of TDP rating an cooling solution.