Roon Nucleus versus Small Green Computer

If that were an issue Roon on Linux or any other operating system for that matter would not be possible at all because while Roon is running there are COUNTLESS other processes running behind the sceen to make the operating system run.

I have to remind you SGC is a Roon partner and surely Roon is not allowing them to make an inferior product with conflicts.

ROCK can be installed on more than just Intel NUCs also known as MOCK. I have installed it on many desktop computers and NUCs from other manufacturers. Roon won’t support MOCK builds.

I’m not in a position to argue with you extensively, particularly in this thread, but it starts off with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems that lead to Alan Turing’s proof in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist; something only complicated by running multiple concurrent processes competing for sparse resources: “The concurrent flow of multiple jobs […] can lead to deadlock conditions due to competition for limited resources in the system.”–IEEE ISSN: 1042-296X

Thanks, that’s very helpful.

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Really? What control does Roon really have if SMG decides that they want to change something either for the better or the worse? I have no doubt that SMG makes very fine servers and I’m coming to the conclusion that the sonicTransporter i7 is the best choice for me partly because it does look like the Nucleus+ is probably just a turnkey ROCK NUC in a prettier case for a whole lot more cash; but that has nothing to do with any control Roon has over SMG or anyone who’s a Roon partner as opposed to actually working for Roon.

Modern Linux operating systems with powerful processors are considered real time.

They can choose to not be their partner and not support them on projects. Becides Roon is closed source how is it going to be changed.

Good questions but they have been at this a long time (Jesus here and Andrew of SGC, from their Vortexbox days). Their support is first class.

Don’t forget those 2 are also behind the software of the micro and ultraRendu’s , very popular Roon Ready endpoints.

I can’t imagine that relationship quickly turning south any time soon.

It’s true that you never know but then you could ask the same questions of Roon - will they be here 3 years from now?

Better to just go ahead and enjoy everything now, in the moment :wink:

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Real time as opposed to what (fictional time?) and by whom is the combination of Linux and a “power processor” considered so?

I have skimmed this thread and I have a question: there is a lot of focus on “high performance”.
Why do you think a high performance computer is a good thing?
There are specific scenarios that are demanding, but unless you need those, a lot of idle power does not improve anything.

I have discussed this:


Hi Anders

Is it a possibility that you wouldn’t have your i3 Nucleus crashing issues with a more powerful i7 Nucleus+ ?

‘Less is more’ always sounds great until it bites you in the bum :grin:

I’m not at all suggesting that’s related to your crashes by the way.

For the record I do serious DSP and my NUC i7 ROCK (same inside guts as the Nucleus+) has never crashed…

Not because of capacity.
The Signal Path display shows the Performance number at 86.4, which I interpret as Roon using just over 1% of the capacity.

No, I think it’s all @Danny’s fault :rofl:

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Hehe all good. Hope yours and the others’ i3 Nucleus crashing issues in that thread get resolved soon.

OK, fair enough. That definition is perfectly fair as, well, a definition. However, you can’t be implying that modern implementations of Linux on a “power processor” have the ability to respond in real time, as defined here, under an effectively infinite load or number of CPU-intensive applications running at the same time, noting that any one application may and likely will spawn many, many sub-processes of its own independent of the many background processes already running specifically for and by the OS (Linux here). Isn’t that part of why purpose-built music servers use an optimized version of Linux, to eliminate processes unnecessary to serving music? The real question here, and what I’m trying to ascertain, is how much “real time processing power [or throughput]” is required to run Roon Server without having dropouts or failures. It may be next to nothing or it could be a lot particularly if you run a lot of real time [digital signal] processing, such as transcoding 4xDSD to 24/96 PCM (as one example) on multiple concurrent music streams going to different “Roon Ready” endpoints on the same network, not to mention responding to what amount to interrupts from the remote control App on, e.g., multiple iPads also run concurrently by different people in different “zones”. If a Nucleus with the i3 processor can actually handle all of that, why does Roon make the Nucleus+ or SMG make the, “sonicTransporter i7 for DSP”? If it’s just a marketing gimmick to up-sell you, I’d like to know that. If, on the other hand, you do need the equivalent of the Nucleus+ or sonicTransporter i7 to successfully do what I’ve described here, I’d like to know that, too. That’s really all.

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Sarcasm is not needed here.

The extra cpu is needed for things like DSP, maintaining larger data bases, and features to come.

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First, I was just yanking your chain because I wanted concrete information, not blanket statements, no offense intended; plus, you weren’t exactly being polite to me, either. Second, I’ve had both the microRendu and ultraRendu recommended to me many times by friends who have the same basic type of audio gear that I do, so I plan to get one or the other very soon. I’ve also just sent an email to SGC asking about getting a sonicTransporter i7 with 16GB of RAM because I’m developing some Roon plugins in C and want to be able to experiment with more complex algorithms prior to optimizing the code and more RAM never hurts particularly if you also want to future-proof yourself, IMHO. So chill out, cowboy. It’s all cool.

Come on guys. Let’s try to be fair to other companies who also offer Roon on their solutions. They fact that they do, gives us consumers a lot more choice. I personally think that ST is well up there with Nucleus (both hardware and software). Most reasons to choose one over the other would boil down to personal preferences such as esthetics.

I was talking about the single page web interface of ROCK. But granted, it was not clear from my post.

Sure. I can appreciate that. I personally have no interest in upsampling or oversampling (I know they’re not the same thing at all) because, in my own system and in my own experience, they don’t actually improve the sound; but I see your point. Thank you.