Nice thread, I would love to see the Age and Computer Savvy of respondents
I suspect a lot over 60 and very computer literate
I am 67 and a retired Microsoft developer (amongst other things) for example
I would be fascinated by the age spread of Roon users
Mike
According to the KB, the recommended processor is an i3, and only a third generation one at that. This means that we can repurpose a 5-7 year old general purpose PC as a Roon server by just adding a $40 SSD.
And Iāll side with the Roon team on the architecture: I think itās brilliant to have one (recycled) device that handles all the overhead of library management, music storage, DSP, and streaming music in optimal quality to any AirPlay, Sonos, Squeezebox, or $35 SBC I happen to have.
Agreed. I dreamed about this architecture (yeah Iām a geek) when reading the online debates about FLAC vs. WAV (claims that FLAC sounded worse) since if the endpoint was presented with a WAV stream there is no relevance to be original format, and now here we have it. Not only the best sound, but killed that stupid debate.
As an aside I really lost all faith in The Absolute Sound when they published those ridiculous digital audio tests a few years back ā where the authors copied FLAC and WAV files from drive to drive and claimed that later generation copies sounded worse. OMG.
tbf, reason killed that debate, not devices receiving WAV.
Well I guess what I meant was that the debate is moot given that a FLAC file can be transcoded to WAV on the fly without generating any EMF or other issues at the audio endpoint, so any theoretical noise coming out of the FLAC decoding would be eliminated, if there ever was any.
Iād like to think reason killed that debate. I actually believe that the authors of the article and the editors of TAS still do not understand how off they were with that series of articles. It was just so ludicrous.
An interesting article ā I have been very engaged in information protection and trust chains and the interactions of technology and law, national and international. (Btw, I share some of Doctorowās view, think others are misguided.) Very interesting, and profoundly important, but Iāll take that discussion elsewhere.
We both speak of the remarkable power of the general purpose computer. But my motivation is not IP protection or fighting with the customers, exactly the opposite, ownership of both bits and atoms are both supported by the open architecture (ROCK is free and NUCs are cheap). My point was all about convenience and reliability and opening to a larger customer base.
And note, my piece was not advocacy, it was prediction. Approving prediction, yes, but still prediction.
I am with @crieke in that I donāt get your point either Anders. An smart phone has transformed computing in amazing ways and is anything but a single purpose computer. It makes phone calls, has a contact database, is a GPS, a camera, a flashlight, and a way to play music yet so much more. The fact it can do many things well is part of the appeal. I see companies like Synology betting on a future were a NAS is a central part of the home and business environment. They are delivering more than just a NAS, but it is a server that looks like a NAS. My Diskstation can act as a roon core, it can run Plex for my video content, it can host a website, act as a email server, a photo library, and is cloud storage for my family. Iām old enough where Iāve used 7 or 8 computers. Iāve lost precious memories from the way past and I had files everywhere with no good way to transfer them or access them once I moved on to a new computer. Buying a Synology NAS was a profound change in that I save everything I create there. I wonāt lose it again and I can access it anywhere with any device.
I do agree with you that weāre in a time of profound change in how we use our devices and what they can do to impact our lives (note I donāt say improveā¦do I really need a computer to open my shades? 
) But I can now get a text message on my phone that lets me know someone is at my front door and then I can log in and see who it is and if I should be concerned. I can order my food from my car and the restaurant knows when to have it ready as I pull in. I can play music at the highest possible resolutions to all my sound systems throughout my house and share it with my family who can see so much information about the artists and their concerts etc. It is an amazing world full of many devices working together to do many things. I think how the change is huge is how weāre starting to connect all these devices so they can work together to meet our needs. That is what I see happening.
Well, yes, but no.
Todayās smartphone is a wonderful device, it is the pinnacle of the previous decade.
And the PC is a wonderful device, it is the pinnacle of the previous two decades.
Both will continue to exist and will deliver value.
But they are not the future. In the sense that they will not see a dramatic growth, or growth at all.
Note that I am comparing their āweakā growth with 50- 100 billion smart, connected devices over the next decade. Those wonāt be PCs or smartphones or NAS.
Why is my view so radical? Why is there so much disagreement? Especially in this forum?
Because we are all technically savvy and invested in the expertise that allows us to get value from these devices. This blinds us to the problems of the current generation and the possibilities of the next.
Of course I have PCs and smartphones and tablets.
But I would not invest my money in stock, or my time/effort in work, in something that isnāt either āambient computingā or cloud, or is based on the use of those.
The NAS is a special case, and I donāt want to disparage them anymore. I would just say, how many of your friends or acquaintances or relatives would enthusiastically pick up on your suggestion of a āserver that looks like a NASā¦, can act as a roon core, it can run Plex for my video content, it can host a website, act as a email server, a photo library, and is cloud storage for my family.ā Who wants to operate a web server or an email server or cloud storage or a photo library or video server at home? Indeed, almost nobody wants to operate a Roon server at home, thatās why this discussion is relevant in this forum.
You may be right. Time will tell. Two years ago when everyone was starting to talk about delivery of packages by drone, and autonomous cars taking over the roads, I was saying, āWait a minute.ā Doing these things are harder than you think and they may never succeed. At least for now, I have been proven right. Amazon is still not delivering anything by drone, and after some well publicized accidents with autonomous cars, they are still more of a pipe dream than anything practical. Iāll check back on this post in five or ten years and look for your update.
Well, there was a timeā¦ The picture is taken from the booklet on Microsoftās Windows Home Server (now alas RIP). And unless you have good network bandwidth at reasonable costs, there is still something to be said for it.
I think Andersā point is that innovation isnāt about making what we we already have better. Itās about making what we already have obsolete.
Brian - the Nucleus option was not available when I build the NUC i7 with ROCk for Roon Core, was having intermittent and irritating problems with both windows and apple - but if the NUC ever falls I would not hesitate in purchasing a machine that is Roon ready and supported by your team. So weāll done!
Thank you Anders for your first post in this thread.
It contained excellent thoughts and advice for the non techies and proved invaluble to me over the last two years. It gave me direction and a goal and proved you right especially in my case with the JIT transition from Sooloos to ROON. Hindsight is tuppence a bucket, foresight is priceless. Nucleus + Rev B with 4TB SSD is perfect here.
Sincere thanks to all at ROON
Love this - Iāll be using this in futureā¦ 
Is a royalty of tuppence every time you do too much to ask 
This is a good thought document. I wonder if the audience in this forum is representative of the larger pool of consumers that will ultimately drive the trends. The audience here generally seems passionate about maximizing the quality of their listening experience. Today that necessitates investment in playback gear that is not a priority for the bulk of consumers.
For the broader base of consumers it seems to me that the market forces at work today are resulting in ever better music quality available in gear thatās attainable by a broader audience. Today those devices are probably not satisfactory for the fidelity level expected of this audience but those devices continue to increase demand for better experiences. My hope is that weāll continue to see the gap between hi-fidelity experiences and mass market continue to close by mass market approaching hi-fidelity and not the other way around.
Are services like Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Prime Music, etc. that are making high quality source material available to a broader audiences the trend? If so then why wouldnāt we expect that single-purpose device to be some form of connected speaker for those that donāt want to use headphones? On the headphone front it seems that the cycle toward better quality is firmly in place - Beats, Bose, AirPods, etc. This thinking seems to be aligned with your thoughts.
As for Roonās place in all this thatās kind of a key question. My bet is that Roon can continue to innovate and evolve to be the best consumer experience to discover and enjoy music across all of the services that source music plus my home library. It seems to me that Roon will eventually need to move beyond the tie to Core. When I leave the home I have to drop out of the Roon experience and use Tidal, Qobuz, Pandora directly. It would be great if my Roon experience could travel with me as a better interface to consume those services.
