Roon Nucleus verses Apple Mac Mini M1

I am going to buy a new Mac Mini M1 and then repurpose my 2018 mini as a Roon core machine. (I’m getting the cheaper model because I don’t need the extra storage.) So for $699, I get a brand new desktop and a semi-new music server that costs way less than Nucleus or even SonicTransporter i5. Even though the ST5 is “purpose-built” I seriously doubt you would notice any difference in SQ between that and a Mini just running Core.

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My audio dealer and friend has the NUC. He wants the Nucleus as he think it sounds better. He also didn’t enjoy the fiddling to get it to work. Your mileage may vary.

In my own experience, the Nucleus is completely and utterly plug in and play. No fiddling. Never have to do anything to it. It just works. The Mac mini was a headache (though I never ran Roon it). Also, it’s much harder to add a LPS to a Mac. Easy peasy with the Nucleus. Oh and the Nucleus is completely silent - no fan.

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Probably more about if you only need a Roon Core than what is best… if you need more than just the core ie using it for other things like Spotify streaming, YouTube, etc, then no Roon OS device is going to cut it. Also if you DAC needs Windows drivers a MacMini or Roon OS device is not going to help you there either.

My audio dealer told me to spend twice as much on my last set of speakers. He even tried tapping his foot to the music more enthusiastically on the more expensive ones. Fortunately I have a set of ears and and my own mind to make up.

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Back to the subject at hand: I got a MacBook Air (base model) for ■■■■■ and giggles. It is so fast it’s not funny. It’s cool as a cucumber while multitasking, even when non-stop video calling in (non-optimised) Microsoft Teams. And yes – it is rock stable (pun intended).

Not to mention it is fast & flawless running Roon and Roonserver. If (when?) Roon is compiled for Apple silicon things will get even better. If I needed a mini now, it’d be an M1 for sure.

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Gary…Hey, I said your mileage may vary. And I can understand how you got confused by my post. You had a great opportunity to be a smartaleck and you took it. Brilliant trolling. I congratulate you on it.

My audio dealer also happens to be one of best friends and I trust him implicitly. We have been on the audio journey together for 15+ years.

He pushed a NUC but I didn’t want to fiddle. It was my decision and im very happy with it. In listening we thought it sounded better. Purely subjective.

Always love when people just assume they know the whole story.

Thank you Michael.

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I use a dedicated 2012 MAC Mini and love the way it works. I added extra RAM (16GB) and SSD drives. I also removed the 120V PS and use 12VDC LPS to operate my Mini keeping it quiet and cool. I got my eye on a Mini M1 too…hope Roon has an answer to the two’s compatibility!

Just an update on my Mac mini M1 8 GB/512MB - it is all working excellently, and it is ridiculously fast - noticeably quicker than my lat 2015 iMac 3.3GHz i7 with 16GB of memory. I don’t run Roon on either, but I can’t see any reason why the M1 mini wouldn’t be perfectly capable of running Roon, and whatever else you fancied. This music producer is blown away with the capabilities of even the base model.

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it should be notable that Roon OS (ROCK & Nucleus) has about 30% increased performance over MacOS/Linux builds given the same hardware – this is due to a lower level implementation of a framework we use that we only have working on Roon OS.

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To be honest, I am getting very, very worried to see you evolve to a Sooloos business aproach again, albeit on more generic available ( but very specific and as such strictly limited) hardware.

In my personal belief, optimizing for a closed system can bring benefits in the short run, but is not sustainable in the long run.
Just my 2 cents, and it is your business anyway.
Dirk

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But the M1 based Macs seem to have performance that has surprised even the Apple fanboys, so what reason is there to suppose a Mac mini M1 would perform less well than a similarly priced Nucleus? Have you tried it?

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Just one user’s POV, but I will likely replace my current Mac Mini server, circa 2014, with an M1 model if and when RoonServer is available native. As much as I’d like to go with a Nucleus or Rock system, neither has a good backup solution. On the Mac, I can run Time Machine to an external drive and Arq to S3. If Nucleus or Rock could do anything similar, I’d go with one or the other.

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We have the pre-release dev system, and it’s great. Apple silicon is ridiculously fast. Anyone with an iPhone 11 or higher knew this would be coming… no one expected how fast though.

That said, RoonServer on Roon OS is much lighter – about 20-30% plus significantly less memory used.

That’s excellent and valuable feedback. Thanks!

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A silent NUC cost more or the same as the Mac min

What is RoonServer? Are you talking about Roon or ROCK?

This. My NUC just died and I started looking at replacements. The Mac mini looks ideal, even the one with 2TB SSD is reasonable.

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RoonOS is the ‘optimized’ operating system on a NUC, with a special version for the Nucleus.
RoonServer is the headless version of Roon software at the core of a NUC/Nucleus system.
ROCK is the combination of RoonOS on a NUC/Nucleus and RoonServer.

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I must have missed the introduction of RoonServer, it is different from the regular Roon install?

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Roon ‘all in one’ is what you’d put on your PC or MAC. It uses Windows or MacOS as the operating system. It runs RoonServer as a service, and you use Roon as the front end or client. If you download Roon for Mac or PC, it is just called Roon.

RoonServer is ‘headless’. It has no user interface. You would run it on one computer, and operate Roon via another computer. This is the preferred configuration for Roon. But not necessary for getting started.

A NUC can run RoonServer alone. When done with the stripped down RoonOS, it is ROCK.
You can also run Roon on a NUC with Windows as the OS and control it like any other desktop.
If I haven’t confused you yet, you can also run RoonServer with Windows as the OS. You would need another client for the front end, like an iPad. This isn’t ROCK, because of the Windows operating system.

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