Hi from a new user of Roon. I am a long time user of a Logitech Transporter being served by a Vortexbox running LMS.
I have installed the Linux version of Roon core on my Vortexbox just yesterday to trial it running Devialet AIR native via ethernet to my Devialet 220 Expert Pro.
It seems to be running fine streaming 16/44 to the Devialet, I have not yet tried anything higher res than yet.
What I did notice is that it seems to be engaged in analysis of my music files on the Vortexbox, it’s been running all night and is only about 30% done.
I’m wondering if the spec of my Vortexbox server is up to the task of running Roon core?
Description AMD A4-7300 Dual Core Up to 4.00GHz Processor
I don’t know the hardware, but bear in mind it only has to do the initial analysis run on your entire library once - which is computationally and IO heavy and is always going to take a while - and after that its just ad-hoc and you’ll probably barely notice.
I’d just let it finish, and then just see how you find the performance. Or if you’re of the impatient persuasion, disable the analysis and that will give you a feel for what it will be like.
Well, you’ll soon find out once you start enabling everything. Chances are you’ll be fine - so much changes in the server space you might as well hold off for as long as you can and upgrade when you find you need to.
I run multiple zones, some in sync, and the main one with a fair bit of DSP including convolution. My Mac mini barely breaks a sweat. I’m mostly red book, but I can upsample the main hifi easily to Devialets poultry 192 PCM max - plenty of cpu headroom left over (although personally I don’t bother upsampling long-term, because, unlike many here, I can’t really detect much difference).
@Disarmamant, once the analysis finishes, just start implementing what you want to do with DSP, one thing at a time. Keep an eye on the “Processing speed” shown at the top of your signal path, and you’ll soon figure out whether the VortexBox is up to the job.
Like @hifi_swion, my i5-based Mac mini is doing everything I need it to do with no issues, but “all” I ask of it is to upsample everything to DSD256 on my main zone, and sometimes I listen to an iPeng/Squeezebox zone with everything downsampled to what my iPad can handle. I’m getting ready to add a couple of more zones, so I’ll be going through this same process of seeing how the mini copes with the additional demands placed on it.
As others have said, you should use it and see how it works. How well a machine will work for you is based on a lot of individual variables; so unless the hardware is obviously way to slow, I say go ahead and try it.
The initial analysis can take a long time because it is doing audio analysis of each file to discover the DR levels. You can turn that off temporarily while you use Roon (Settings/Library/Background Analysis Speed to OFF, and then turn it back on and let it run overnight. That way you can enjoy Roon without worrying about the analysis overhead.
So far it seems to be working just fine. Thanks for the tip the analysis. I checked the library settings and analysis setting is ‘Throttled’, so far its scanned 6200 of 9700 files. I will set it to 2 cores and let it finish overnight before I back it up.
I don’t have Squeezebox support enabled as I am still using the Transporter with LMS as I use LMS to stream Qobuz via the Qobuz plugin, I also use the BBC listen live service to stream the BBC Radio 3 proms in FLAC, both of these I can’t do in Roon (yet)!
From what I have read there is no tie up with Roon and Qobuz on the horizon, pity that, as it would be the icing on the cake for me.