I see your point. If your system depends on multichannel playback to sound its best, there are fewer options.
One option is to go with a multichannel DAC Roon Endpoint of which there are a couple. Although that is an expensive route as they are not cheap.
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I am a long-time audiophile who used to own high-end stereo gear. I’ve sold it, helped design some of it, helped exhibit some of it at CES, etc. My experience suggests that the best multichannel audio always trumps the best stereo setup.
That’s fine. My experience has been the opposite. A properly configured 2-channel system can, with the right recordings, produce a completely enveloping sound stage–with sounds seeming to come from the far sides, above, and even behind the listening position. The limitation is that this magic only happens at the sweetspot. Move but a little to the left or right and the stereo illusion, which depends on rather precisely matched arrival times of sound from the two speakers, will collapse.
This is the strength of surround-sound and mulitichannel music…one can sit off-center and still experience a reasonably enveloping soundstage. In my opinion, this makes the format ideal for sharing movies with friends and family. However, I find the solo two-channel listening experience from the sweetspot to be at least as good and often superior.
The number of well mastered two-channel albums is also several orders of magnitude greater than multichannel. I think it’s the two-channel listening environment for which Roon was primarily designed. That it works at all for multichannel music is a testament to the excellent engineering behind it. However, as I asserted before, optimal sound quality (for 2-channel music playback) is available to those who deploy and configure it as Roon describes in their “Sound Quality” knowledge base article.
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As I said, I used to be involved in high-end audio, and have had great stereo systems. And I’ve tried the solutions you suggest, with endpoints separate from my ROCK. I have another computer that I’ve used as an endpoint (both usb and hdmi), a Raspberry Pi with a hat, a couple of Oppo blu-Ray players using RAAT. And I’ve tried other supposedly high-end solutions. I often listen to two channel with some of my systems. But if I really want to hear Mahler’s 3rd I listen to one of the several great multichannel recording I have. While it is true that a properly set up stereo can often create the illusion of the recording space, our hearing mechanism is such that actual discrete sound sources are much more likely to do so consistently and convincingly.
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We seem to have drifted off topic here…
Too many ROCK users.
I’ve tried ROCK on 7i3BNK, 8i3BEK and 8i5BEH. The 7i3BNK is the quiet one, the other ones makes quite a bit of noise even in a well ventilated cabinet 5 meters away.
The 7i3BNK has a TDP of 15W (as does the 7i5 model). The 8th generation models have a TDP of 28W as far as I know. This probably accounts for the increased fan noise of the 8th gen models?
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Thanks everyone. Really appreciate all the replies and viewpoints. As someone new to Roon, ROCK, NUCs, etc., it’s very encouraging to see how many people are running them and still retaining their sanity.
I intend to study the knowledge-base as I go. Before buying components I just wanted to ask one more question:
Would an internal ssd on the NUC or even an external ssd attached directly to the NUC be accessible to Plex that is running on a Synology NAS? I’m thinking about remote access.
As a network share, yes.
Cool. Thank you.
I recently built a ROCK using an 8i3BEH in an Akasa Plato fanless case. It’s fast (as long as Roon isn’t having its “search issue”) and, in the fanless case, silent.
The standard NUC is not quiet. It was louder than both an old Dell i5 laptop AND a Synology NAS which I was using in the same room previously to run Roon store/core. The NUC was noisy even at idle and the fan is an annoyingly high pitch. If you’re using it outside the listening room AND in a space where you don’t need things to be quiet (like I did in my office) then you’ll be OK with the standard NUC, but I’d say there’s most certainly a reason why the Roon team designed the Nucleus to be fanless.
The transfer into a fanless case was pretty easy as long as you’re careful, follow the instructions, and use common sense/ask for help on the forum for anything you’re not sure about. Check out my thread on it here if you like, especially re: the difference in BIOS procedure between the Roon ROCK install KB and the actual BIOS in the newer 8xx series.
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Then your NUC had an issue. All the NUCs I’ve had were and still are whisper quiet.
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I don’t think so. I’ve since heard a friend’s NUC and the noise was exactly the same as mine.
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I have two 8i5BEH and one 8i3BEK and they all make fan noise, even at idle. I believe the high TDP is the reason. The 7i3BNK was almost noiseless but has a lower TDP.
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Can it be down to some configuration? My NUC8i3BEH i also nearly silent…
Mine is very quiet certainly much quieter than my Nas or laptop.
This is what I believe.
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Not unless you’re doing something specific in BIOS config? Mine was making this noise level with BIOS config as out of the box except for the changes recommended in the ROCK install guide.