Suggested hardware

Nice write up and, even nicer, seems I am all set with two nuc’s that fit the bill :smile:.

Brian

Thanks for the informative post, I love the engagement that Roon is having with its potential customers (and fanbase!) . It would be useful to have a similar article at some point on what the hardware recommendation are for tablets.

From an eco and cost point of view, do you know whether a PC supporting Roon would have a Wake on LAN type function?

Another thought crossed my mind which is would a dedicated Roon machine built with a Linux image have lower spec requirements?

Cheers
Tom

What do you want here? Wake-On-Lan is trivial to add, but I don’t understand how it’d work. I’ve used it in the past, using this piece of software: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wake_on_lan.html – but now I just leave my machines on.

A Linux image with a “headless” install would require less hardware than one with a user interface. It wouldn’t require any GPU, or any memory for graphics work. However, all the basics of databases and background processes would still be there.

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The mobile app is the exact same user interface, same game engine graphics, and so forth that you’d be running on the PC/Mac, not some watered down “mobile solution”.

Tablets are a couple of years behind Macs/PCs, and really just started to become fast enough for this kind of user experience a year or two ago. There are still areas where we’re riding the edge and pushing the bounds of the performance envelope. This makes my advice very simple: Buy the best, and upgrade often :smile:

We aren’t doing anything with Wake on LAN at the moment. My gut says it’s not a great idea for Roon, but what are you looking for here?

Roon will perform better on a dedicated machine than it will on a machine where it has to compete with other apps for resources. It will also require less resources if run headless. Linux does not make a substantial difference.

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The truth is I don’t know how wasteful or expensive it is to run a computer 24x7x52 but I would imagine that it would be a more than 3x5x52 (assuming I don’t listen to music everyday) - I know I could turn it off if I cared enough, but was interested if there was a better option.

Cheers
Tom

Ok, got it. We’ll give it some thought. Thanks!

did you check out that tool by nirsoft for doing wake on lan? would that just solve your problem?

I’ve just had a quick look at it. The WakeOnLan option looks like a possibility. There is also an Android app which will act as a trigger too. Ideally an option in the Roon control software would automatically trigger the software or code to wake up the Roon server. This option only supports wired servers, which is to be expected.

Cheers
Tom

Fing has a WOL facility for iOS users, and on my Android phone I use an App called…Wake On Lan.

Both do the job, and I’m sure there are others.

That said, one of my Squeezebox apps (forget which now) had a tick box to enable WOL which I think just sent a magic packet before starting the main app. Something like this functionality would be incredibly useful in my environment as my main PC is also my media server. When I’m at the PC and using it obviously there are no issues, but I don’t like to leave it on full power 24/7. But for convenience, I don’t power down, I just leave it to go to Sleep.

If I’m in the living room with my tablet/phone and want to listen to music it used to be easy to fire up the app, wait a few seconds for the PC to boot from Sleep (SSD made this fast) and then listen away.

I’d sign up to Roon without it, but it would be nice to have something similar (and it’s got green cred!)

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Hi, first post here.

How crazy would this be? Any chance of cooling it well passively?

SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F a 45TDP Xeon-D mini-itx motherboard with 10Gbase-T. Ok I’ll admit it, it was the 10Gbase-T and 8 core that seemed fun, snappy enough? Not too bad pricewise, could a passive cooler tame 45TDP Watts in a small case? I’m almost thinking about the MC200 case… :wink:

SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F

https://skinflint.co.uk/supermicro-x10sdv-tln4f-retail-mbd-x10sdv-tln4f-o-a1247744.html?hloc=uk

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/D/X10SDV-TLN4F.cfm

That CPU is awesome, but my past Sooloos experience tells me that you can’t passively cool that thing in a reasonable manner. However, my past experience was to make a reliable shippable product, not a contraption for my home :wink:

I’m sure you can do something with water… this is not my forte!

Ok, there are several quiet passive cases out there. Just beginning to look at this again. Last time was when I was building HTPC’s :wink:

http://www.hd-plex.com

preliminary speaking HD-PLEX seems up to the task… Will dig some more…

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HDPLEX is nice stuff, have a lineair power supply from them, there were scratches on its case due to shipping, got a replacement cover shipped right away. Good service.

One can also run the core in a place where noisy is ok and use an endpoint that is silent of course.

Could I suggest Roon look into somehow running on, or talking to VortexBox? My current reference front end is an AudioAanZee music server, which basically runs on VortexBox software,with a superb linear power supply and special care taken on several accounts including the USB output. I found that this music server sounds much better than any PC/Mac solution, and when connected to the Jeff Rowland Aeris DAC even beats my former Meridian MD600/818 system, which is why I am eager to continue to use it with Roon.

ps the latest VB software (v2.3) utilizes Squeezelite, whereas earlier versions utilize MPD.

@brian Is Roon able to take full advantage of multiple cores? I am weighing up my options for a new laptop at the moment and wondered if fewer cores at a higher rating would be better for Roon than more lower power cores?

1 core is going to feel pretty constraining, and I see no benefit going beyond 4.

UI responsiveness is primarily impacted by the speed of a single core. Application startup time, same deal.

Background processing (importing music, retrieving metadata, downloading artwork, analyzing audio content, …) benefits from multiple cores, especially when you’re multitasking with other apps–but this stuff isn’t running all of the time. It’s triggered as a result of new imports.

“Taking full advantage” implies that we would sometimes be spinning your 8-core at 800%. We don’t do that because it’s not a polite thing to do, especially on a machine where you’re highly likely to be listening to music :smile:

If I were building a dedicated box for Roon, I’d prefer faster cores over many, but if you’re going to be doing a bunch of stuff at the same time on this machine, it really depends on what that other stuff is.

Thanks. I was just weighing up between a dual core and quad core Macbook Pro. It sounds like dual core would be sufficient for my limited budget. We have a benefits scheme at work that allows us to purchase computers at a discounted rate but you don’t get the full choice of options. For similar money it appears I can get a dual core 13" with 512GB SSD or 15" quad core with 256GB SSD.

It will have to live in the listening room though so I am still concerned about fan noise.

@en1omb,

Don’t be overly concerned about the fan noise. I have a new MacBook Pro and I can’t remember last time its fan has started working…Mine is 13’’, 3 GHz Core i7 with 1 TB SSD. Planning to use it as a core before I have found a reasonable solution for a fast fanless NUC machine.

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Some of the latest Qnap SMB/SOHO Nas units are quite powerful now, i7, 16gb ram and support VM’s (Virtualization Station) , would Roon run satisfactorily on these? I hope so as combining Store and Server would make the decision to move to Roon even easier as well as reducing box count.

Cheers

Russ

See this discussion: Why a local (pc) install? for the NAS question.
I fully agree it would be great to have it run on one (ideally both Synology and QNAP).

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