Hello guys!
I’m not a roon user yet but I’m planning to be soon. I have a Rotel RA 1592 (not the MKii). I’m planing on using a NUC for my core. Im wondering if I can connect Roon directly in my amp or do I need a seperate streamer like a Bluesound?
Thanks!
On the face of it the network connection would seem to be for maintenance and automation so you must use one of the digital inputs.
If your NUC is adjacent to the amp then USB will work, the port labelled PC USB .
If the NUC is going to be remote then Ethernet to the router and you will need an end point connected to the network local to the amp and then use USB , or Coax or digital.
The hi res spec looks the same , class 2 USB seems best
Roon best practice would be to split them. It depends also how noisy the NUC is
Thanks for the reply @Mike_O_Neill
Oh great! So I don’t need to change my amp?
At this point, my core will either be a NUC or a 2014 Mac mini. I might start with the mini first and then upgrade to something else and move my core to the new machine.
No it has a DAC built in so all you need is a digital feed.
Have a look at the Raspberry Pi running Ropieee, an end point very common for Roon, very good very cheap.
It’s effectively an Ethernet port and a USB port with bits in between 
Probably under $100
Yeah I looked at this option as well…
But technically, I can just hook the NUC or the Mac Mini via USB to my Rotel and it should work right?
For the noise, can I just add a jitter bug behind the NUC or MAC Mini?
Sorry for all the questions.
I meant mechanical noise not electrical, the NUC / Mini may not be silent in the listening room. Especially if you have a spinning HDD but yes NUC.> USB will work fine unless the NUC makes a physical noise
So ideally, an SSD?
Yep, but what about the NUC fan ?
Oh yeah. Is the core that demanding for the cpu?
Sorry for the late reply I was getting STABBED YAY …
Yes …
It depends how you use it , library size counts and how much DSP you use if any they are the big process drains
Also as you start up a new library the analysis chews processor but that’s just until your library has been analyzed again dependent on size. Then again per CD added.
If you are buying a NUC and money is no object rather than re-purposing one then “Go BIG young man” . I would go i7 and put 16Gb of RAM in there that should future proof it . Your data drive can be HDD but SSD will be quieter if you are having it in your listening room, the System drive MUST be SSD say 128 or 250 Gb for the OS and Library files.
This is the Roon official recommendations
Thanks again @Mike_O_Neill
I have about 1tb of music. A mixture of Alac, Flac, Wav and MP3.
I was also thinking about running PLEX from the same unit.
So now I’m thinking that a Mac Mini with a M1 chip would work better?
For the Library, I will probably put everything on a WD NAS.
Either this one: My Cloud Pro Series PR2100 | Western Digital Store
Or this one My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra | Western Digital Store