Roon Core on an Intel based SBC?

Runs Roon Core very nicely. (I strongly recommend spending a few extra $ to get dual-channel RAM.)

If you’re interested, buy one before they run out of stock (I think they’ve been out-of-stock for the vast majority of the time they’ve been nominally in production).

1 Like

problem with many of these SBC’s is cases that look the part. fun to tinker with but I have several MOCK machines and a NUC ROCK that I have used over time. My latest MOCK was a Win10 running i7-7700 Fanless and that does everything I need just fine.

Of the 5 SBCs in my house (all fanless), the Odroid H2 running Roon Core consistently runs the coolest: 39-41 ℃ under normal operations.

Jaques, what OS are you running on the Odroid?

Ubuntu 19.10.

1 Like

CPU usage while streaming from Qobuz:

400% = full CPU usage of all 4 cores.

Same thing, but now upsampling to 32/768 PCM:

Still only 50% of a core.

2 Likes

That’s excellent performance for an x86 sbc. I was waiting for the atom based rock pi x to fool around with, but that odroid looks like it does the trick beautifully.

The Odroid H2+ is out! Based on the J4115 (replacing the J4105 which remains in short supply) and sporting 2×2.5Gb ethernet.

Here’s the forum announcement.

There’s also a US distributor.

1 Like

Will roon run on a Odroid H2+? Only discovered the device today.

Since you asked me, if @Jacques_Distler says it’s good, it’s good.

Roon Core can be run on any x86 device.

OTOH, as a Core the H2 CPU is underpowered (IMO) to do any heavy Roon lifting, i.e. involved DSP or multiple simultaneous endpoints

1 Like

Or, if you live in the US, you could get an officially supported NUC, with RAM and case, shipped, for about the same price. :man_shrugging:

(not saying one is better than the other, just pointing out the possibilities here)

Running to 3 endpoints simultaneously is no problem. I do that regularly (3xnegligible=negligible).

As you can see from the graphs above, upsampling to 32/768 PCM (a single-core operation in Roon) takes about 50% of a core.

I haven’t tried any convolution filters (the only filter I use regularly is volume-leveling), but I would expect that those would look similar.

FWIW, here are the benchmarks for the i3-5010U and the J4115. If you want to run multiple endpoints simultaneously, you probably want the 4-core J4115, rather than the 2-core i3.

1 Like

Undoubtably. There is the matter of the Realtek drivers, and having to deal with full-scale linux rather than something taylor-made that’s supported was my point point. Someone who knows what they’re doing (even a little bit) - as long as the price is OK, and you like what it brings (starting with fantastic electrical economy, as well as the pleasure of messing around), give the Odroid serious consideration. At the same time, if Roon is all you’re going to do with it and that you’re OK with spending a bit more, remember that an ODroid + case + PSU can be as expensive as a similarly configured NUC8i3

Wow! EU prices are expensive (VAT, I presume).

Odroid H2 + 16 GB dual channel RAM + 256GB NVMe SSD + case + power supply cost me just around $200.

OTOH, as you say, the NUC is officially supported, and you can run ROCK on it.

Indeed.

With the H2+ (not the H2 that I have), you need to install the Realtek drivers to get the ethernet to work. Those drivers are/will be in the Linux 5.9 kernel. So this is only a temporary impediment.

1 Like

That and importer margins, I’d guess - MSRP ex tax on the H2+ is 140 Euro. I’d suspect the insane UPU Chinese shipping tarif thing should apply to Europe as well, though it might not be as dysfunctional as it is with North America. In any case, someone’s taking a cut somewhere along the way.

Hardkernel is a South Korean company. They ship from a warehouse near the airport in Seoul. The last board I ordered from them took 37 hours from when it shipped to when it arrived on my doorstep in the US. With the time-zone difference, that’s same-day delivery :slight_smile: .

1 Like

I’ve gotten stuff from the China than from California.

Just FYI, I’ve been playing around with Convolution (FIR) filters, produced with DRC-FIR on a Raspberry Pi with a miniDSP Umik. The Unix workflow makes it trivial to produce convolution filters for all the required sample rates (44.1k, 48k, 88.2k, 96k and 192k).

The additional workload on the Odroid H2 is negligible (with or without the convolution filter enabled, 88.2kHz ≈ 20% of a core).

It’s really interesting what does and doesn’t entail a large CPU load in Roon.

1 Like

Hmm, wondering what does impact the processing.

Multiple simultaneous endpoints, I guess.

As long as the number of endpoints is less than the number of cores, it doesn’t matter (each seems to get its own core).

Resampling is definitely costly (see above).

1 Like