This deserves its own thread as it’s an interesting topic! Mods, any chance?
This is a valid point and used to be very well catered for by Meridian’s Trifield implementation. Well, I say used to, it still is, but they don’t push it as hard these days as a selling point which I feel is a huge shame as it’s fabulously good!
I think you both have a point - a perfectly set up stereo might approximate a good surround setup, but in actual living rooms rather than dedicated studios and especially when sharing the musical experience with others, multichannel is hard to beat.
What’s your room temperature? With my NUC8i3BEH fan noise is almost absent in winter and spring seasons (with 20C) whilst in summer (with 26-28C) fan noise is perceivable even when not streaming.
I am using ROCK and recommended BIOS settings.
Just connected a monitor to my NUC8i3 and had a look in BIOS settings, Cooling option was set to Quiet. That is the second most silent option, there’s also Fanless which i assume mean that the fan shuts off completely when possible.
So there seems to be adjustments to be made for those who experience noise from the NUC8. On the other hand, if it is to be used in a closed up space or with high temperatures i wouldn’t recommend setting fan speed to anything less intrusive than Balanced. But in those circumstances a fanless case would make even less sense.
OK, my fan setting out of the box was set to ‘balanced’. The room in question was not particularly hot when I ran the NUC in its standard case (around 12-14C).
My Roon Trial just graduated to an Annual membership. I purchased the Roon ROCK NUC components per the recommendations for a NUC8I3BEH. I’ve never done anything remotely like this before but will trust in the setup process because I am genuinely impressed with Roon.
NUC8i3BEH4 just arrived. It will be another day or 2 for the ssd and ram. Just want to ask 3 quick questions…
Q1: I’ve been running Roon on my iMac 27 for the duration of the trial and controlling it from my iPhone and a Macbook. Would it be best to uninstall Roon from all my devices, set up Roon ROCK on the NUC and then install Roon again on my devices so I can select the new core?
Q2: I’m not sure yet where to run storage from. Currently all music is on a ssd attached via usb to a Synology DS218j NAS. I’m thinking that it would be better to attach the SSD USB directly to the new NUC? At the same time I was thinking of moving my music library directly to the NAS so that it’s backed up properly. Just not sure if the NAS (with HDD) has enough grunt to get data to the NUC over ethernet. This is actually keeping me up at night.
Q3: I’ve been hearing alot about DACs and am wondering if it would be better to output from the NUC to a DAC and then to my receiver, an Onkyo TX-SRS313 or will I be alright with HDMI out from the NUC to my Onkyo TX-SR313 receiver?
Thanks again. Sorry to keep zapping this thread. If i’d have known that it would have legs like this I would have chosen a better title than “Feelings on NUC8i3BEH for ROCK?” Ew.
Hi there,
Q1: No need to uninstall. Use your MacBook Roon client to “Disconnect” from your old Core and then Connect to the new Roon ROCK Core (when its installed and up and running)
If you feel the need to move your database with its edits, you can make a BackUp first from your old Core, before decomissioning it. This can then be Restored onto the new ROCK Core.
Q2: Bring the external USB to the new Core, and have locally when building your library. You can move your music files later if you feel like it with a small edit of the storage path(s). I wouldn’t worry about a NASs grunt, it’s what they do, any decent NAS will provide more than 30MB/sec which is way, way more than any streaming solution would ever need.
Q3: If you are content with how the Onkyo sounds, you’ll be alright with an HDMI connection to it. If you are not, i doubt an external DAC will change your mind.
(While i appreciate the versatility of multichannel system, they still dont outperform av cheap two channel system to these lugs…)
It’s what I have atm. The speakers are pretty fabulous!
I’m building up a new system around Roon. I’m educating myself as I go. I’l start with the HDMI now and try a DAC in the future when I have a new system. I appreciate the heads up on this.
Just bought and setup a NUC8I5BEH with 16Gb Corsair DDR4 SO-DIMM Vengeance and 250GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus.
Setup was 10 minutes work and as simple as falling over.
Migrated database from older Atom/miniITX server (also running ROCK) as per instructions - no bother at all.
I can’t say I’ve heard any sound at all from the NUC! It seems massively overspeced for the work being done so I suspect it’s just kickin’ back and enjoying the music too!
If you really want, you can use Roon procedural EQ to make a decent 2 to 5.1 or 7.1 up-mix via HDMI 0 out from NUC including low cut/high cut crossovers at 80Hz (or whatever you want) on all channels for sub channel extraction. Its a little fiddly, but doable.
Tried it recently (for the sake of science) and was pleasantly surprised with the result into my AVR in direct mode (ie bypassing its own up-mix, sub extraction etc).
