Running Windows or OS X with Roon? Which is better?

Any experience on both what do you think is better for Roon?

I run both. If you want/need to use AirPlay, Mac is better. if you want/need ASIO to your DAC, Windows is better. Otherwise I find no difference.

Thank you very much for your reply I am new to this, I already have a as rock mini PC but thinking of purchasing a Mac mini for running Roon so before buying a Mac I would like to hear some experience.

Here is an example of what I am saying. I was running Roon on a Mac Mini, but my DAC can only send native DSD256 files via ASIO, which is only available on Windows. So I switched Roon to Windows. However, I already had the Windows PC. I would not have bought a new PC just for the marginal gain of native DSD playback. Functionality, performance, and GUI are virtually identical on both Mac and PC.

I would go with windows. I have personally seen fewer issues on the Windows side of things. Since Roon is based on .NET I think it just works smoother in the Windows environment.

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Thank you Rugby

roon team has mentioned a couple of times that roon is faster on windows.
I run it on a Mac with no issues but may go the wiindows route in the future when I get a dedicated PC for roon.

Mac Mini, Roon Server runs perfectly fine.

FYI, if you have a Mac Mini, you can always run Windows natively using Boot Camp, so you have the best both worlds.

For Roon, this does not matter, as we do not use the Apple services for discovering or speaking to Airplay devices. The same Airplay related code runs on Windows, Mac, and upcoming Linux builds.

@Rugby is right about the .NET thing… and just as @Skywatcher said, the code will perform slightly better on Windows than on Mac or Linux.

BootCamp has always left me with a bitter taste in my mouth… it generates too much heat, as the power management drivers never seem to be as good as they are on “true” Windows machines. I guess the Dells, HPs, and others actually write better drives for their primary OS than Apple does for a tack-on.

Your AS Rock mini is probably underpowered for Roon. It’ll run fine, but things will be slower than you could have it be.

This is a great thread about hardware, especially post 20 by @brian

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/suggested-hardware/90/20?u=danny

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This might be worth noting here