clean air is the solotion if wireless, otherwise it’s in the cables 
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The best systems use dedicated nitrogen listening rooms as it remains more stable at different temperatures.
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Dress accordingly! 
Well I’ll answer for me. I run a Mac Mini with 1TB HDD, it’s not big enough and the hardware is getting real old, my OSX version also doesn’t seem to run as well as the windows version. So I wanted to upgrade hardware anyway. I’ve now upgraded to a NUC 6i5SYH and installed an M.2 plus 2TB drive. All my music fits on this drive. I went down the i5 path because it’s more power efficient and I thought it would be quieter than an i7 unit. The appeal of ROCK for me is the lower OS overhead than a Win solution freeing up more of the hardware capability for Roon.
I’m now running win10 on my NUC awaiting ROCK and win10 is a right pain in the arse, it’s constantly updating the operating system and you can’t stop it doing so. The NUC is running nicely but when ROCK arrives I’ll turn it into an appliance. I really just want to listen to music not worry about the win box. I don’t know anything about Linux otherwise I’d just install that.
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If you tell WIn 10 that it’s network interface uses a metered connection (i.e. tethered to your cellphone) you can turn off automatic updates.
If you’ve not had the creators update yet you can spare yourself that big download. It’s more frustrating than usual because it requires interaction to reach the logon screen, so if you’re running headless (w/o display, mouse or keyboard) you have no idea where your computer went or why until you connect it to peripherals.
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Thanks for that, I’ll try that. I did read somewhere that there were rumours Microsoft was going to start updating over metered connections as well but I’m not sure if that’s after a period of not being able to update.
I was thinking of using rules in my router to limit any connection from that machine to only Roon services/associated IP addresses but I’m not sure what Roon uses and it’s a bit of work trying to establish the rules.
Hopefully there will be the release of rock soon and I can avoid the headache.
Windows pro can d3lay updates. And if you figure out ghow go get it, Windows Enterprise can hold off updates as well as not have any bloatware.
Here is my take on what is happening right now [Speculation]:
Reasons for my thinking are mainly: a) ROCK is taking a bit longer than anticipated. However, as pointed out by AMP, there seem to be no problems running it, b) ROCK is designed as a turnkey solution, and c) ROON has low visibility in Hifi stores as it “only” a software solution.
It could be that ROON is working together with Intel to bring out a real turnkey solution, meaning a ready-to-ship NUC with ROCK installed. This unit could also be placed in Hifi-stores and would highly increase visibility. What might even make more sense is that the NUC is provided together with a partner as they already have the required sales channels. ROON could then go on focusing on software only as it is one of their goals. In that case one of the RoonReady partners would make sense (e.g. Bluesound).
Furthermore, it would then make sense to include a lifetime subscription. The total could retail for around $800 (NUC 500 + ROON 500 + 20% discount)
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Partnership with Intel would have to be announced 1st of April 
Well Munich High End is next week so maybe some announcements will be made.
But it will not be what you suggest if at all it will be a branded version with a price tag to match.
If you want cheap you have to build it yourself.
Look at Asrock Deskmini 110 it is Better, faster, scalable, more silent and cheaper than a NUC especially compared to the i7 NUC’s.
Only down side is you have to mount the CPU on the motherboard yourself and it might not support ROCK but then there you can always use the Linux or windows Roon installation.
I’ve been following this ROCK business for a couple of months. I was 95% ready to buy a Sonic Transporter to run Roon and take my MacBook out of the equation. Upon hearing about ROCK and more than one person recommending I hold off, I decided to wait. Man, am I starting to get impatient. I know the SonicTransporter would be a fine solution. But the Roon team has been doing a good job of hyping up ROCK just enough to keep my interest. Part of me wants to say f*** it and just buy the damn ST. The other part of me thinks it’s better to wait if ROCK is right around the corner. Sorry for repeating what others may have stated already. I just felt I needed to shout into the void.
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Also, I should mention that I love Roon, love the concept of ROCK for serving a certain portion of users, and really appreciate the hard work and innovation of the Roon team.
Nice we get a discount!
I’m in the same boat, but not even running Roon yet! Not having a suitable core, I was about to get a ST when it seemed Rock was nearly ready. So I thought I’d wait for that. But then the delays. So I thought, ok I’ll get a nuc and get some help to get a Linux distro set up on it and install Rock when it comes out. Then came the advice to consider holding out on hardware purchases until Rock was ready because of the much speculated “surprise”.
So I’m left using the LUMIN app to stream DLNA from my NAS to my SoTM, desperately waiting to give my cash to you dedicated hard working guys at Roon!
I know if I get something to fill the gap, Rock will likely come out about a day later and I’ll be really peeved, so I guess I’m just going to have to wait. Hurry up Rock!
Also if you go to services, you can disable Windows update, turn it from Manual to Disabled.
There is no way that price would be realistic… the ARK price from Intel on the board-only NUC5i5 + RAM + SSD is around $500. Then you have to add a good power supply and a fancy case for that market.
That type of price in the HiFi channel market would go for well over $1000, not including the Roon license.
Lessons here:
- Boutique hardware always costs more. No one can compete with the price of a NUC from Intel with a short life (the 5th generation above is a 3 year lifetime, not 1 year like the retail kits).
- Fancy cases and power supplies will never be offered by Intel, only boutiques.
- The HiFi channel, involving distributors and storefronts, amplify the cost of the final product.
Oh yah, and 20% off Roon is just crazy talk! Go ask Intel for that discount and see what they tell you 
… and in my opinion, Roon is worth far more than the NUC.
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I am building a new audio PC for a friend (who is also a Roon user) and would like it to run Roon Rock. It will have an Intel I7 7700 CPU on a Intel Z270 motherboard. Will the Rock OS support Thunderbolt for external hard drives (I am guessing because the latest NUC supports Thunderbolt on KabyLake platform it should?) I would rather run a Thunderbolt drive on Thunderbolt 3 so as to not be competing for resources on the USB bus. I am also hoping Rock might support installing Rock on Raid0 M2 SSD’s (I know thats a bit unlikely but would be great). Worst scenario we will put Windows 10 Pro 64bit on it and run room on that. I would rather not as this will be a single purpose audio PC.
Regards Andrew
This may or may not work. ROCK is targeted solely at the NUC platform so depending on drivers you might have an issue. Regardless, as mentioned many times above this will not be a supported configuration.
At this point we don’t know. @danny has made it pretty clear that Thunderbolt may or may not work and that all depends on proper driver support in the linux kernel.
Don’t count on it… no, let me rephrase that… extremely unlikely.
Overall, given the data rates involved I think you’re going WAAYYY overboard on this. DXD has a data rate of approximately 20megabits / sec. Most spinning drives can easily deliver 50 - 80 megabytes / second. USB3 has more than an order of magnitude more bandwidth than that. There won’t be bus contention. There’s way more bandwidth than traffic. Thunderbolt won’t get you or your friend anything aside from a lighter wallet.
Same goes for striping the SSDs. Get an NVMe M.2 card and you’ll have significantly more bandwidth than Roon will be able to use for its database.
Regardless, unless you’re planning to build on a NUC you aren’t doing your friend any favors by trying to load ROCK on unsupported hardware.
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do i get some cookie points? Guess I wasn’t too far off 
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You did pretty well
When you posted this, I was thinking ‘holy crap this guy nailed it’ ! 
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