Hello from Germany,
I am thinking of moving my roon core from my Dell Desktop with Win10pro to a new Mac mini 2020 with
macOS Catalina.
Any experience or tipps on that topic? Does that work?
With 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB externe SSD
Thank you very much in advance and have a nice day
Lambert
Do you already have a Mini or are you deeply into the whole Apple ecosystem?
If not, then use an Intel NUC, with or without ROCK.
Or install Linux on the Mac Mini… that should run fine and very stable.
Roon runs fine on my 2020 Mini with Catalina. Not a problem of any kind.
IMO, a Mac mini is an expensive choice for a Roon Core. By all means test it, but long term, a cheap NUC with Rock as a single purpose dedicated machine may give a better experience. You can still use your Mac mini as a remote/endpoint etc.
Lambert, if you want to use you Mac mini as a Roon core, download the skinny core only version if you don’t need the remote functionality. Disable the AppStore, automatic updates, and disable spotlight.
Thank you very much for your kind answers and input. I will think about it and let you know, if I bought one and added the roon core. Price should be around Euro1.500,00 for the desired setup.
Now its a Dell i7 > USB > ADI-2 DAC > XLR > Dynaudio Professional Active Speakers
Nice day, Lambert
My comment had been removed, yet my point of view stands.
macOS Catalina is highly unstable, especially when it comes to the sound outputs, audio drivers, using more CPU and RAM for processing than needed. It had been reported as one of the most unstable macOS version, don’t believe me – short Google search will do. I did used it on mac mini, which I used as a Roon Core and a Plex Server. After I’ve downgraded it from Catalina to Mojave performance went up approx 10%, power consumption went down, RAM consumption and eRAM as well significantly decreased. It also was reported by other members of Roon community - macOS Catalina interface laggy randomly while running Roon (High GPU usage randomly, Roon idle 20% GPU, sometimes up to 99% usage)
On the other hand, if you want to switch to the machine you currently don’t have, I would side with MJB and assumably others, pointing to the NUC & ROCK as a way better/cheaper option.
[Moderated]
Best,
Rom
Discussion of moderation is usually off-topic in a thread. If you are concerned about moderation read this post first. Then you can PM the moderators or open a thread in the Roon Labs LLC/Roon Community Site section to discuss.
My setup is as follows:
There may be cheaper options but you can safely implement this one.
Mac OS is getting more and more bloated over the years. On the other hand, more services, more possibilities and complexer security are a fact now a days. I still prefer 10.6 snow leopard and used it until 2018, but that is simply not an option anymore.
Mac is phoning home for a lot of services. If you don’t like that then disable those services.
Here is a start:
https://gist.github.com/pwnsdx/1217727ca57de2dd2a372afdd7a0fc21
importent notice.
Mike, thank you. I think I try a Intel NUC 10 with i7 - 10710U, 1 TB internal SSD, 32 GB RAM and Windows 10 preinstalled. All in all for Euro 1030.00 I will download the sinny core only version only.
Nice day, Lambert
I am the creator of the thread you are quoting, the issue is NOT Catalina, the issue is Roon consuming the 100% of the GPU resources, happens to Mojave users as well as reported don’t remember if in my thread or another that was merged into it.
If I was @Lambert_Brunner I won’t move a thing to MacOS until Roon fixes the CPU (High CPU Usage on Mac Mini 2018) and GPU issues.
I’m quoting people who stated irregularities mentioned in your thread - a); constant issues with macOS Catalina been reported all across all community boards, as well as the issues I’m relating to - high CPU usage, high RAM usage, power consumption increasing — eg https://www.techradar.com/how-to/macos-catalina-problems-how-to-fix-the-most-common-issues - b); The fact that haven’t run into somebody’s reporting such doesn’t mean that it never happened (survivorship boas).
Your techradar link is pure sensationalist clickbait rubbish, and “quoting people” doesn’t make your argument anymore plausible than my arguably “survivorship boas”. But whatever… in a couple of weeks there’ll be an all new macOS release (Big Sur) to rubbish.
Roon says a fix is on the way…
I use beta Catalina 10.15.6 on my 2012 MAC Mini and it works FLAWLESSLY! I run it on 12VDC with a 1GB SSD and a 1TB HDD for back up! 2.6GHz i7 Quad Core with 16 GB RAM. It’s dedicated to Roon.
This setup has allowed me to enjoy many many more hours of music than when I had crappy players like Audirvana and Pure Music! These players could not hold Roon’s Jock…IMHO!
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/dky6ja/why_macos_catalina_is_not_apples_finest_moment/
And numerous others
If you don’t consider ’survivorship bias’ as a valid argument, additionally can’t spell it right, we have nothing to talk about. Cheers!
