SSD for the Nucleus and how to rip CDs for it

Roon Software Discussion Nucleus
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Simplicity is wonderful. I wouldn’t worry about upsampling unless you really want to – you have a beautiful machine in that McIntosh, and it should be the part of your system that makes your speakers shine. All you have to do is feed it digital music.

So, I’d probably just get a Nucleus, connect it to the McIntosh with a USB cable, subscribe to Qobuz or set up some Internet radio stations, and start playing music. If you’re determined to rip your CDs, as I said before, there are services that do this – you send them the CDs, and they send you back a hard disk. Or you can get a simple CD drive that plugs into the Nucleus, and let Roon’s built-in software do the ripping.

You can buy a Nucleus from Roon here (actually, this is Amazon).

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Roon has so much to offer and I don’t know how to use most of the features. You’ve read the articles and are probably aware of this already.

What simplifies things for me is how my music is presented, how easily accessible it is, and having my library integrated with Qobuz and Tidal streaming services.

You can page through your library, once it is digitized, to find what you want or enter a search in Roon and it will find it for you. The search will go through your library, and the online streaming services, and present you with the selections found for your search criteria.

I like to pick several albums and add them to the queue. Then on the queue page you can select shuffle or play them in order. Hours of listening without having to swap discs or vinyl albums. The radio feature kicks in when your selection is finished and plays similar music if you so desire. That feature can be enabled or disabled with the touch or click of a button.

From your posts I gather you know exactly what you want to listen to and it will be there for you. I do like the radio feature. I’m exposed to new music every day and a click or 2 with the mouse or touch of your finger will add that music to your library.

Then you have the playlist feature. Pick individual selections from numerous albums and just play those.

It goes on and on. Use it however you desire and enjoy it.

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This has become my favourite thread on the forum this week. The enthusiasm shown is fantastic! Can’t wait to see where this goes for you TheraP.

By the way, I wouldn’t so quickly dismiss the streaming services mentioned. Did a search in Roon (with Tidal integration) for “Biber Rosary Sonatas”, giving me a result of 28 different albums to discover.

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How about:

  • Mozart’s “Requiem”

  • “Carmina Burana”

  • Pachelbel’s “Canon”

  • “Chorus of the Slaves” from Verdi’s “Nabucco”

Those are a few teasers and I suspect if you try them that ROON will find you more things to your liking! I would start with Pachelbel. Which you will likely recognize! Then maybe the Chorus of the Slaves. And afterward Carmina Burana and/or Mozart’s Requiem. The latter are longer, with many parts. Then of course there’s Handel’s “Messiah” which you are likely familiar with, but ROON will use that to provide further classical music. Put Palestrina in and see where it takes you. Try a little Bach and listen for how the music starts out and then riffs from the beginnings. The same thing happens with Beethovan. Try “Fur Elise.” Or his Sonatas.

I recently discovered Ori and Omri Epstein (brothers who play piano and violin) and Utube has some amazing short HD recordings that you may fall in love with. From different composers. They are also part of a trio and play/record lovely music.

These ideas will get you started. Then you may find you also enjoy sacred music from either the Orthodox tradition or the Catholic monks. (Try to find recordings of actual monks for both. The Russian Orthodox Liturgy can be trance-inducing.)

Hope at his helps, Mike! And thanks for your wonderful advice and recommendations.

My plan at the moment is to wait till Monday (when the snowstorm is over) and get the cabling to hook up my Surface Laptop to download a trial of Roon, then see how much better sound I get just from an Ethernet connection (via laptop) to my MacIntosh. I can also try ripping some CDs and seeing what Roon does with them - and how that might be tweaked. Etc. Etc.

And afterwards consider which Roon machine to get. The only reason (possibly) to pay for the more powerful one, from my perspective, is that the upgraded DAC module (recently available and now installed) allows for playing music so HD that you probably can hardly it find at the moment - but that will be coming. (Of that I have no doubt.). Whether one can hear such a difference… well, that’s the question of course.

DA2 Module “Supports up to DSD512 and DXD 384kHz”

Versus DA1 Module: “DSD256 and DXD 384kHz levels”

And more differences. Not that I truly understand what those words just above mean.

So that’s why I’m wondering about the more expensive Roon. (Though could Roon upscale the less expensive model to do that in future? Or is it a hardware issue from the get-go?)

If anyone has the technical expertise, it would help me decide whether - in the long run - it’s to my advantage to have the Nucleus model that allows for greater … (whatever you call it).

While I’m 75, there is longevity in my family. So I could be looking at another 25 years of bliss here!

My compliments to you all! What a great/helpful group!

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There are 2 other Classical dedicated streaming services , IDAGIO and Primephonic. Not Hi def but certainly only CD lossless

To be honest every time I find something in either I also find it in Tidal

My interests are Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Schubert Wagner etc

You will find no shortage of stuff in Tidal , eg Beethoven Symphony no 9 has no less than 1345 recordings , certainly all the basic recommend versions

Happy hunting :roll_eyes:

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Martin! So helpful!

When you say 28 different possibilities, do you mean to purchase or listen to via streaming? If you mean the latter, then surely it’s worthwhile to try out whatever meshes well with Roon and see where it takes me. I’d love to try all 28 different versions of “Bieber Rosary Sonatas.” That is something you could love listening to - for all the nuances in how it’s been played.

Sometimes I’ve thought it would be such fun too have a chance to conduct. As sometimes, when I hear things, I can envision - for me - a better way to express certain passages. (But I will admit, that years ago at the old TPM Cafe, someone from the Chicago Symphony assured me it was not so easy to conduct.) I’ve also imagined another life as a ballet dancer - modern ballet. But that’s another story. Around age 40, I realized my ballet career was over… My arthritic fingers would also have cut short my career as a piano virtuoso.

Well… Yes, it’s been a wonderful thread!

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To anyone: What exactly is “power supply” and do I (ultimately) need it?

I got to this question from the original thread (Adding a high end DAC to Nucleus) and it seems that some have (or recommend) “power supply” and someone above here as well, I think, recommended that for the Nucleus+.

I am still not sure which of the two, Nucleus or Nucleus+ would better suit my upgraded Macintosh. But I will, as I said above, test the Roon with what I have now. And maybe over time the answer (which one?) will be made clear.

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Thank you for the response and the suggestions to get me started. Carmina Burana sounded familiar so I searched on it with Roon. Pleasantly surprised to find I had it in my library and the search listed my copy and one from Qobuz with higher resolution.

That was actually a good example of the Roon software, took less than 30 seconds to find I already had the album and, with the integrated streaming service, it provided me with enhanced version. Would have taken some time to search through the cases to find the cd.

Your doing fine with the forum, it takes a while to learn some of the features. For instance I used the edit (pencil button) to update this post instead of adding another with the reply button. Also, you can use the @ to get a list of names for those that have responded to your thread and if you select one it will send them a notification that you have mentioned them in the post or are directing it to them. Not sure that is the correct explanation but its something like that anyway.

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@Mike_LC, Wonderful!!!

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To @TheraP’s suggestions, I’d add a few of my own more publicly (I already sent them to Mike privately).

But let me say, I’m not really a classicist. I grew up listening to my Dad play his classical collection from college, all 78’s from the 1940’s. Pre-stereo! But I’ll listen to any genre that has acoustic instruments and/or the human voice. Folk, blues, jazz, classical, country, even musical theatre.

Caveats aside, here are some other things I like a lot:

Brahms’ “A German Requiem” – helps if you understand a bit of German, or read a translation of the lyrics – massive choral work – try to find the one with Otto Klemperer, or the James Levine recording

Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” – shorter work drawn from the whole ballet

Beethoven’s 6th Symphony – I prefer this to the histrionics of the 5th or 9th

Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony – sentimental attachment to this, after seeing Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony perform this (along with Beethoven’s 5th) mid-1970’s, in a concert to illustrate the similarities between the two

Mendelsohn’s Italian Symphony – also the 4th! – just a beautiful work.

Some of these are what the modernist crowd pejoratively calls “classical war-horses”, meaning works that crowd out performance of work by modern – even living! – composers. But they’re war-horses because people love to hear them!

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For streaming. :slight_smile: But should also be said that not all were the Rosary Sonatas, but also other sonatas from Biber. Still a lot to discover. Please let me know if you have any favourite performance/recording and I will try to get a hold of it somehow. I am curious.

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Did my response to the private message get back to you? I’m still learning some of the features.

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To anyone: What exactly is “power supply” and do I (ultimately) need it?

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In the case of the Nucleus, a power supply is the wall wart that comes with it.

Some people believe a more expensive power supply, usually an LPS (linear power supply), improves the sound.

I don’t believe that is true for a computer like the Nucleus.

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Thank you! I looked up “wall wart” and I now understand that too.

Simplicity is key for me. The fewer moving parts, the better. And the less wireless - insofar as sound is key.

I see your name above. So I’m hoping this ends up under your answer. Fingers crossed (there’s probably an emoji for that. But I never bother with them.

Onward and upward. I’m going outside and walk in the snow.

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59

Need it? Nope. If you have bad power to your house, then a line conditioner would make more sense.

Some believe that a Linear Power Supply will provide better power and thus better sound, than using a switching Power Supply. For a computer that is not doing digital to analog conversion internally, which is what a Nucleus is, I don’t hear the difference. But, as long as you get a good properly rated supply, the only thing you’ll hurt is your pocket book to try it out.

However, keep in mind that even if you put a LPS with a Nucleus:

And, as someone else pointed out in the same thread, it makes more sense to make changes at the source rather than have LPS’s all around. See:

The thread to discuss Nucleus and Power Supplies is here:

Best linear power supply for Nucleus now?,

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I have a dedicated NAS loaded with my Roon Core and music library which is connected to a Bluesound Node 2i DAC, it operates flawlessly.

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The power supply provides power to the equipment. In the case of a computer, like a Nucleus, the one that comes with the machine is fine to use. In the case of your McIntosh gear, the company has already built-in some great power conditioning.

If you were in some more benighted part of the world (like here in California, where the public utility commission feels that it’s fine to just turn off power for days at a time when they feel it may be legally dangerous for them to transmit it because they’ve skimped on maintenance for years), you might need more attention to this.

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I’m also running my Core and keeping my music files on a NAS. But the situation Roon hates is when the Core is somewhere else, like a Nucleus, and has to keep scanning the music files on a NAS.

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Okay, sorry, I misunderstood the situation.