I’m thinking of moving from a Roon server on minipc with Intel i9 and Windows 10 to a Mac Mini. Is this a good idea? Is any of the Mac Mini’s comparable to the Intel i9’s performance for handling a 50,000 album library with Roon?
Which Intel i9 and which Mac mini?
I currently have the minipc with an Intel i9-9980HK and the question would be which Mac mini would be equal or superior to that i9.
Thank you for the indication. I understand that less than one m2 Pro is no good, is that correct? And about the sound quality, what is your impression in the community? Is it becoming an alternative to the Intel NUC? Thanks for your response.
I replaced my sonicTransporter i9 with an M1 Mac mini and the performance was just as good with the M1 Mac mini. I have been ecstatic with the change!
The i9 in the sonicTransporter is a desktop i9 that is about 10% more powerful than the laptop i9 you are using in your system.
The M2 Mac mini with the base M2 is better than the M1 Mac mini. If you get a Mac Mini with the M2 Pro, it is even better but not needed with Roon.
I think the base M2 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is a fantastic Roon server that has the power to run HQPlayer fi you ever want to do that.
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The reason for the i9 is to manage the library of 50,000 albums. I’ve tried with an i7 and Roon was slow and took a while to present the albums, process new additions and do the searches. With the i9 everything goes smoothly, even running HQPlayer in demanding mode towards my ADI-2 DAC.
But the sound quality on the minipc is not the best. In my comparisons Audirvana beats it by far. I use Fidelizer Pro and a HDPlex 300 line source for the minipc and DAC and yet Audirvana on my desktop iMac delivers a more musical and richer detailed sound. I think the problem with the minipc is that it produces a lot of noise (fans, USB connections too close together, bad component isolation, I don’t know exactly what) but I don’t want to switch to Audirvana without trying everything with Roon. And there a mac mini I think is a good idea if it works better than the minipc.
Well with Apple Store 14 day no questions asked return policies it’s a no brainer to try it and compare.
The other thing you could also try is replace the windows build on the minipc with ROCK, best done on a spare ssd drive (512gb is more than enough) and compare that as an option too
Thank you. The first thing I installed more than a year ago on the minipc was Rock, but then it got better when I decided to try Windows 10, although the HDPlex 300 is a more recent acquisition and I could try if things improve. In any case I am not the first to have these problems with minipc. They are not of a high quality compared to the Intel NUC and present these problems of clouding the sound with a noisy signal. Music feels less rich in detail, somehow prostrated.
If you would be playing to remote endpoints, SQ would be the same. Playing from the ore device directly, Mini might have quieter USB ports (not that it should matter with any decent DAC) but I also seen people complaining about stutter on Mac USB output. It would also be limited in DSD support, if that matters to you (also, only applies to directly connected devices).
It would be interesting to see some benchmarks comparing DSP performance between i9 and M2.
Hello. I really notice a lot of difference between Roon and Audirvana running Roon on the minipc and Audirvana on the iMac. I can’t find any other explanation than the noise in the signal produced by the bad isolation of the minipc. About DSD, DSD support will not be limited by USB on the ADI-2 DAC. I have played DSD 256 exactly the same on the minipc with Windows 10 as on Mac. On the Mac there is a problem with the optical output, which is limited to 96 khZ, but not with the USB connection. And on the USB there was a problem with the ADI-2 DAC limiting upsampling to 384 kHz, but the latest firmware update (look on the RME website for the flashing tool) can now upsample to 768 kHZ exactly the same as on Windows.
Aren’t Macs limited to DoP output for DSD (except for maybe devices that have custom drivers for Mac, all two of them 
) which limits maximum DSD sampling rate DAC will support? I.e. my Peachtree is advertised as supporting only DSD128 (to keep it simple and avoid Mac fanboys’ ire).On Windows, with no need for DoP, it happily plays DSD256…
If I am not mistaken, ADI2 is pro-level device, it shouldn’t be affected by whatever little noise there would be on USB input.
If there really is any difference (most likely there isn’t ) itmust be due to different settings of two different products running on different computers with different operating systems…
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On the RME ADI-2 DAC (I’ve been using it for a year and a half) the DSD conditions are as described. The DSD I think it works the same in both, although the DOP that you say I remember looking for information in the HQPlayer manual, maybe there is some truth in it. There was a limitation in upsampling, but now the resolution is the same. Upsampling in Roon and Audirvana both apps reach the maximum DSD of the DAC: 256. Only Audirvana upsampling sounds much better. That’s the problem, I don’t want to give up Roon unless it’s strictly necessary and the sound problem can’t be solved.
In case of ADI-2, yes, it supports 768 PCM but only DSD256 (highest DSD you can move over DoP to a 32/768 supporting device, IIRC) so in this case it is not limited by Mac USB Audio support. In case of e.g. Rose 250, it accepts DSD512 as native DSD over USB, network etc., and thus can play DSD512 files from a PC with Rose drivers, but from a Mac, being limited to DoP, it will only accept DSD256. Honestly, not that great a limitation, but something to keep in mind,
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Ah, well, if you upsample, or otherwise manipulate the signal, it should sound different (what’s the point otherwise?) Audirvana might well have better upsampling than Roon (never tried it) but then you could just do it in HQPlayer and get even better results.
Also, if one upsampling sounds significantly different from another (and from the original), that raises the question whether it is actually an accurate upsampling, or does it introduce some euphonic distortion (or, maybe, just slightly raises he volume) to make it appear better-sounding, at theexpense of being less accurate?
I don’t know how this does it, but music sounds objectively better in Audirvana. And I say this without getting into the Roon Rook Linux controversy where the ALSA sound subsystem is recognized by the free software community as inferior to Wasapi, ASIO or the macOS driver. Roon Rook the only thing it brings is a free operating system of parallel processes working on different issues than Roon, but ALSA and ffmpeg are inferior products to those that can be found in other operating systems and software. A problem for me because Roon is the superior software in organization and presentation of the music library.
It would be cheaper to buy a Raspberry Pi or an UP Gateway. Take the DAC off the i9 and move it to a dedicated NAA endpoint since you’re already running HQP.
Do not swap a pc for a pc if you want better sound quality. Get a network streamer.
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There is no such thing as accurate up-sampling. Well, there is, but it requires infinite taps and then the up-sampling would never finish.
Link? I don’t want to say your wrong. I just want to understand the source of “inferior”.
Whichever one is closer to the original is better, in a certain way. It’s not necessarily the same that might sound better to any given person…
I’d like to know that, too. Isn’t ffmpeg pretty much the industry standard? Unless the implication is that being free it just can’t possibly be as good as some properly expensive tool…
Roon recommend an endpoint connection as a core can be using the CPU quite intensively which can affect the noise that is seen over USB.
Having started using Roon on Windows, the biggest improvements were moving from Windows to ROCK on a dedicated Intel NUC (mainly for stability) and getting endpoints. I run a selection of endpoints, Pis running Ropieee, an iFi Zen Stream and a Chromecast Audio. Sonically this made the most difference, the difference between them is very small.