@danny Thanks for pointing this out. When I purchased my Nucleus, I didn’t realize it also would have a performance premium over a non-Roon OS.
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Such a Nucleus-specific performance bump (even if true) becomes irrelevant with the arrival of M1 Macs.
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“Even if true” is a snarky observation. @danny stated a fact and unless you have otherwise proof you shouldn’t throw shade at him. As for M1 Macs, I am curious how a 30 percent performance boost with a Nucleus becomes irrelevant.
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Yep…got my M1 MAC Mini on the way…to replace my 2012 MAC Mini …hope it works with Roon…I don’t see why it wouldn’t.
Does the performance boost make a difference? How can you tell? I want for nothing off a 2014 Mac mini. No lag etc so what would 30% more performance achieve? I read about i3 and better processors and some say don’t go too high as the difference is irrelevant. Its been stated by Danny if I remember correctly (apologies if it’s old age memory playing tricks) that there should be no difference in SQ between Roon cores on anything so it doesn’t alter that.
I can only summise that unless you have gazzilions of tracks and dozens of end points the 30% doesn’t make a whole lot of difference? Happy to be corrected.
Large libraries, lots of DSP, etc.
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There will always be a market for shrink-wrapped appliances like the Nucleus with or without a 30% performance increase. The fact that so many people buy a Nucleus is validation of that offering’s utility. It serves the world of non-technical people who want to buy and forget and don’t mind a premium. It also serves the world of technical people who just don’t want to spend time on this aspect of their music system. I am one of those. I do have a complex setup with 12 zones in my house, have a fairly large library, and I use room correction and dsp in some of them so I’m likely getting value out of the 30% improvement in performance but I don’t know for sure and don’t care. I have spent lots of time optimizing my network with enterprise gear (too much time actually) because that’s the backbone of a trouble free whole house digital music system but I did not want to spend any time thinking and managing where my core ran so I bought a Nucleus+. That was my choice. Roon is smart to offer a range of options from the Nucleus, to an easy install on Macs/Windows/Linux machines to the more do-it-yourself world of NUCs/Rock and installing on NAS’ to serve the needs of the broadest set of users.
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I don’t think you understood my point; so I will rephrase it:
The performance enhancement coming from the M1, when compared with previous architectures, is such that ANY other equipment or computer used as a Roon core will pale in comparison, thus rendering the relative 30% boost all but irrelevant.
And I am just talking about the first generation of Mac notebooks with that SoC; when desktops come the gap will be even wider.
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So what happens if I use a core 50% more powerful than any Apple M1 based computer?
Does the performance of the M1 become irrelevant?
You only need a certain amount of power to move these bytes about.
This was the most interesting and exciting statement in this whole chain…
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It could however mean biggest in terms of file size 
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… to say nothing of what might be possible were Roon to develop a native version for the Apple architecture.
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it’s biggest in terms of changes and effort… many long-standing items that required huge technical changes were completed.
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Where was your effort in the last releases? Just kidding, I am looking forward to the release, even though I could live with Roon as it is now.
Exactly - even under Rosetta 2, software performance with the M1 is already leaps and bounds over anything else.
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No; I mean such a performance advantage is not relevant enough to justify buying a (rather expensive) dedicated equipment just to operate Roon. Obviously you may still wish to buy it for other reasons (such as storing all your music in that equipment, not worrying about carrying your Roon core around, etc.). But performance WON’T be it.
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But it NEVER was. You can buy the same NUC, and put the same OS on it yourself.
The Nucleus has always been about convenience.
Sound good I’ll look forward to installing it, maybe you need some nice retired men to do some customer acceptance testing? We have loads of time in the locked down GB winter…
My eyes! When did they make the front panel of Pink Faun servers…pink! 
Sorry I read it the other way
Which do you have? I’m still using a 2020 Air and look forward to trading for an M1 but I only use it for light general work and photo library, can’t really find an excess to upgrade at this point.