Roon Linux - any limitations vs OS X?

I’ve been messing around with Roon on OS X. Seems fine but all my media is on my Synology NAS including my iTunes library. I think things would be a lot more reliable if I just used Roon’s Linux version with NFS shares (with auto mount) instead.

I plan on running Roon Linux on VMware ESXi.

Server has plenty of resources, just wondering if there are any features which OS X has that the Linux VM would lack?

I know I won’t be able to directly play audio via USB or optical out from the Server without messing around with VMware’s USB stuff (no intention of doing that) but it seems Roon can send audio to a Control USB/Optical out just fine so guessing if I ran Control on the Mac Mini I’d have the same audio out features as if I ran Server on the Mac Mini?

Also is there (now or in the future) the ability to plug in a USB stick of media and auto ingest it?

That kind of feature would probably push me towards using a dedicated Roon box since I’d hate to run down to the basement and plug USB devices into a VMware server!

I migrated from OS-X to RoonServer running on a Debian VM hosted on my FreeNAS. No change in functionality. I don’t use USB sticks to import data. Instead I mount an AFS share to my Macs and just copy files onto the NAS. The same NAS directory is also an NFS share mounted on the Debian VM.

I use my Macs as endpoints and also have a couple of Raspberry Pi’s running RoonSpeakers and a PiCorePlayer as standalone endpoints, all without issue over wire gigabit Ethernet. CPU and memory consumption on the VM is very low.

Leon - I run Roon Server on a dedicated headless Mac Mini that is ethernet wired to my router. Roon is ‘watching folders’ on my Synology NAS where all my music resides. The NAS is also ethernet wired to the same router. I have had no problems to date in this format. No drops, etc. It is working steady and very good.

I used to have it running on a Mac mini with files on synology 1513+. I now have the server running on an i7 Ubuntu box with HQPlayer, the files still on the nas and the mini running either hqplayer’s NAA or as a roon bridge.

All processing on server in the cellar no where near the end point. Outcome sonic bliss

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Thanks for all the replies everyone, Linux it is. Might as well do it sooner than later to avoid myself the pain of trying to migrate my Roon database over.

The db is transportable between os’

Yeah I know, just reading up briefly seems it’s a sequence of copying steps rather than a nice Import/Export GUI option. No matter, my setup’s only a day old on OS X. Can start again.

Hmm, that only took 30 mins :tada:

I configured my VMware virtual machine with no USB and no sound device.

Had to do a little reading. Apparently ffmpeg is the preferred choice these days in the heated battle between avconv and ffmpeg. For Ubuntu 15 and up at least (I used 16.04 LTS).

Also no alsa-lib in Ubuntu’s repos. Installed libasound2 instead. All working now :smiley: