Why is Roon so heavy on the CPU? Surely, Atom CPUs are no powerhouses compared to other desktop class CPUs, but I find that the one in my ds1515+ is very quick at what it needs to do.
The Synology ds1515+ was a massive upgrade from my ds214play in terms of performance, that slightly improved file browsing, but massively improved Plex usage. Both adding metadata and navigating the server is super quick, which it certainly wasn’t on the ds214play.
Plex works really well on the ds1515+, even with some limited transcoding abilities (no 4K). What is it that prevents Roon, which is music only of course, from running well on that box?
I have all my stuff on my ds1515+ now and run the Core on a Mac mini with SSD. Works perfectly and the Mac is also my main playback device. But it’s a bit overpowered and expensive for what it does right now.
For me, I just like the option to run everything centralized on my NAS box.
Your premise is flawed. Roon does a lot more than just stream music; it maintains a fairly intense database as a server.
Now maybe for your circumstance the minimal specs on your Synology might work for you. But the basic specs for Roon running on one machine, with one endpoint and less than 500 albums are tremendously different for a setup where there are multiple endpoint simultaneously streaming different audio streams with a library of 10K albums.
I have a Synology DS1812+ and would be interested in using this for Roon also - I guess as a server rather than an endpoint. I have an audio PC in the listening room which is connected to the NAS via ethernet cable which currently runs Roon, using the NAS for storage. The sound quality of the 2 options would be a factor also.
I too would add a vote for support on Synology. I have one and find that I can run many other apps on it without taxing its resources. I think as with Synology’s own apps, it is reasonable to only support NAS above a certain level in the line. Synology has product which is barely over an external HD replacement and product which is really able to serve as a central facility in the home. I have a DS3615xs which is a good unit for serving the needs of a home. Moving Roon to this always-on device would go a long way to making it a true part of my home music environment. Booting up my computer every time I want to listen to music is not great.
I’ve read the article, but to the causal user it’s hard to tell exactly what Roon does differently than e.g. Plex, which increases the hardware requirements.