It does not matter if local or added from streaming service it’s the total number of tracks that’s important in order to gauge processor performance.
That said, from what you said, I suspect you will be fine with an i5 device.
Roon says the Nucleus One is good up 100K tracks.
If I were building a NUC for ROCK for a 100K track library I’d spec a pair of 8GB RAM modules … it may be over kill but RAM is cheap and having two banks fitted may improve performance (slightly).
Tbh this NAS is significantly underpowered, it runs a particularly slow Celeron CPU in terms of single-core performance. Consider yourself lucky that roon is still able to play anything with a 50k library. I was running roon on a Qnap with a CPU more than double the speed benchmark of your N3160 and it just collapsed under the load last year.
Getting yourself a Nucleus One is the easiest option in terms of running the roon core and not caring for server maintenance. Note that in this case you either have to install an internal 2.5" SSD to copy your files onto and loose the RAID features. Or you keep running the NAS simultaneously which means you still have to do updates and take care of it.
The alternative would be to get yourself a modern Qnap NAS like the TS-264 which should be similar in performance compared to a Nucleus One but offering the advantage of easy migration of your HDDs plus M.2 slot for cache/fast database SSD plus all the data security features. The migration was really fast and convenient.
If I’m not mistaken, roon on NAS isn’t a supported device. Why even go down that road.
Again anyone is free to do what they like, but it just seems if one is going to implement roon with the best odds that has a mid or above sized library, get a loaded up NUC and install ROCK or similar hardware and install Ubuntu server and be done with it.
I’m not being argumentative and there are always specific use cases that some choose because it fits their workflow. I’d say if you’re not real tech’y do the ROCK thing or else Ubuntu server. In either case M.2 for the OS along with hardwired ethernet to endpoint.
I’m of the opinion to dedicate certain tasks to specific hardware (e.g. dedicated modem, router to “route”, switch to connect multiple devices, server for roon duties, wifi AP(s) for wifi etc…).
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
10
Will you be replacing the QNAP with another NAS? If you’d be getting a new one anyway, keeping Roon on a NAS at least limits the number of boxes you need to take care of. For what it’s worth, I haven’t had any issues similar to your running Roon on a Synology. Not the best if you plan on doing a lot of heavy DSP and/or your library is going to grow a lot though.
Otherwise, either a Nucleus, or just repurpose some old computer, depending on how much you want to mess with it.
In my case the virusscanner on the QNAP (TS-453be, 16gb ram and library on ssd via usb) has a big (negative) impact on performance of Roon. After I turner it of (scans would take several days), everything worked smooth again.
currently i used roon in a container on my ts-410e qnap nas with 8g ram and 2 8tb ssds.
no issues until now, one box, no noise, little energy usage.
after every qnap os update roon worked as before without any additional actions and roon updates worked with no problems as well.
my library contains about 80k tracks and uses 2 to max 4gb ram.
roon uses less than 1% when playing without conversion and about 15% cpu when sample rate conversion from dsd256 to dsd64 is running.
currently i don‘t use dsp features and play only to one zone.
the ui performance is fast but depends often on the internet speed when searching.
@Gunter_Strubreiter can absolutely confirm your positive experience with a fully silent QNAP NAS model! Even a library of 130k tracks is handled well yet a bit less snappy when browsing. As roon can be installed directly from Qnap´s Appstore you do not even need a container or manual installation. And setting updates, malware scans and alike to fully automatic mode, such a NAS does not even require a lot of administrative attention.
We should remark that your TS-410e is equipped with one of the faster Celeron CPUs to be found in a NAS. I strongly recommend to opt for one of these more current models (like TS-410e, TS-264, TS-364, HS-264 or alike) as outdated or budget ones might suffer from slow CPU or low RAM when running roon.
During my second year of running it, my QNAP got attacked by a ransomware virus which wrecked my library. I didn’t want to pay, and I’ve been nearly 3 years trying to get things back they way the were,
I dare not run without the virus checker. Also I keep admin account disabled unless I need it.
