What are the hardware requirements for streaming Qobuz without DSP?
My offline collection is relatively small (<20K tracks) but I stream a lot in Qobuz.
I do no DSP at all, even for volume control, just passing the PCM (up to 192/24) to the endpoints.
What are the hardware requirements for this case? Will Nucleus suffice, or do I need the Nucleus+?
Based on this post, I guess Nucleus should suffice:
I’m still asking becase it looks like Roon makes a lot of metadata processing, maybe also for Qobuz tracks which are not in my collection, say for the Radio feature.
It it matters, I have ~100 favorite authors and ~100 favorite albums in Qobuz.
The fuller answer: the rule of thumb is that a Nucleus can handle up to 10,000 albums (100,000 tracks) and up to 6 simultaneous zones, with limited use of DSP.
Note that the albums can either be local, from a streaming service (TIDAL and/or Qobuz), or a mixture of these sources.
Note that the albums can either be local, from a streaming service (TIDAL and/or Qobuz)
Which of the albums on the streaming service are counted - only purchased and favorites, or all the albums available for streaming? The latter can easily exceed the 10000 albums threshold.
Ah - only the albums that you add into your collection; either via favourites or purchased (the latter presumably become part of your local collection of files…).
Hmm, does it mean that Radio won’t suggest tracks which are available for streaming but not in my collection yet? Say, tracks which I’ve never listened.
I’m going to create a feature request for that. Radio over all the unkown tracks could have been a powerful discovery mechanism. Qobuz does actually offers something like that (Album suggestions and Similar artists), but I won’t mind also to get also suggestions from Roon.
Roon Radio in version 1.6 of Roon will explore the entire known universe of music in streaming, not just what is in your collection. That is the whole point of Roon Radio in 1.6. Roon Radio in 1.5 was confined to your own collection.
Roon Radio in version 1.6 of Roon will explore the entire known universe of music in streaming, not just what is in your collection.
In my case the entire universe is essentially the whole Qobuz catalogue. Exploring the whole Qobuz looks expensive to me, much more expensive than exploring an offline collection of 10000 albums.
Besides, people are reporting that Radio suggested artists unknown to them:
Radio 1.6 did nicely and found several Tidal artists unknown to me!
So I’m still in doubts about the hardware requirements. Of cause, processing the whole Qobuz collection doesn’t have to be expensive. If the Qobuz API was fine grained enough and well aligned with Roon’s needs, Roon could have made next track suggestion merely by sending a detailed request to Qobuz and receiving a compact response with one or several tracks. But I don’t know the Roon/ Qobuz communication protocol. In theory, Roon may need to ask, say for all the Jazz Fusion albums in 1997, or something like that.
I think you should read the release notes and the threads in the forum again.
Radio looks at your initial selection and suggests tracks to follow one by one.
Suggesting unknown artists is part of the point unless you’re a Beethoven and Mozart forever sort.
A Tidal lossless subscription is $20/month. A Qobuz lossless subscription is $20/month. Yep, it’s a lot but since I’ve been a Tidal subscriber, I’ve about doubled my library size. For $20, you gain access to out of print titles and can have a listen to artists and works you wouldn’t necessarily buy. On balance, this retired moocher thinks its a good deal. The two together are a VSO orchestra wings seat per month for many hours of music.
A switch constrains Roon Radio to your library. Of course, you’ll miss out on new music.
Roon Labs comments on library size determining Roon server processor performance are bogus guidance. The number of simultaneous streams determines processor performance as each has to be decoded for transmission to the endpoint.
Library size determines disk space and the efficiency of the database indexes determines performance searching the local library data. Network latency and service load dominate service catalog search times.
A 10 year old core i3 Mac Mini is my Roon Server. It does fine with 1300 albums and 2 active streams. Note that this Mac Mini is running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS rather than MacOS (out of support eligibility). The machine has been hotrodded with an SSD and extra storage but it is still pretty minimal by today’s standards.
Music is on a Xeon based FreeNAS server running on low end E1250 hardware with 32 GB memory. It doesn’t break a sweat.
I am new to Roon and have been very happy thus far. I intend to buy the service when my 14-day trial expires. My current set-up is a streaming-only dedicated inexpensive HP laptop hooked up via USB to a Macintosh CA2600 pre-amp with built-in DAC. I have a strong WiFi signal and there are no drop-outs. I operate Roon through a iPad Pro. Absolutely no problems.
My question is, if I am only streaming Tidal and Qobuz (when it’s no longer in beta testing) through Roon and do not have any music storage requirements, are there any advantages or increase in performance by upgrading to a Roon Nucleus or other streaming-only device instead of continuing to use my laptop dedicated to streaming-only?
