According to @brian’s recent post, this may not be the case for much longer.
1 Like
Ok, no problem. What hardware would run this properly?
If your library fits on one SSD and you have no intention to run HQ Player on the same machine then the fastest i7 NUC you can find (with a storage SSD or connecting to USB storage) running ROCK remains the best current solution. That may change when support for NET 6.0 on Apple Silicon is rolled out (see Brian’s post linked above). That is a current project under development atm, but it is subject to Microsoft progress and release cycle.
If you want multiple SSD storage or think you might like to try HQ Player in the future then a fast i7/i9 or AMD in your favourite ATX case and appropriate cooling running Windows 10. See this thread for the latest suggestions regarding most intensive HQ Player settings:
Whether you opt for a NUC or an ATX server I would suggest separating the inevitably noisy Core from your DAC with a Roon Ready device (NAA for HQP). I use a Sonore microRendu, but with your resources and gear I would opt for an Optical Ethernet link using the opticalRendu and an opticalModule or Optical Ethernet card at the NUC/Server end. Optical Ethernet is the best separation from the Core available and is a lot cheaper than trying to tweak a NUC or ATX box into being quiet.
Whatever Roon Ready device on the ‘clean end’ you opt for, I would recommend powering it with an UltraCap LPS-1.2. This uses switching capacitor banks, one running the Roon Ready device while the other recharges, meaning complete isolation from the wall power supply. This did wonders for transients on my system.
Ok, thx. My current setup has my mini connected to the network and playing over RAAT to a dCS Rossini - which is RoonReady. The network connection to Rossini is over a fiber and a network bridge (fiber to ethernet) powered by a linear PS (an Ultracap actually). I will try the highest spec NUC with ROCK, 32gb RAM (my Roon db is about 13gb I think so doubling that in case it can all be loaded in memory), an internal SSD for the system and the music SSD (4tb) for the files.
I have tried HQP before and do have a microRendu that I use in my headphone setup, but I don’t think I want to deal with HQP at the moment. Although I would give the SQ nod to HQP when connecting over USB, doing so over NAA would require a rendu or similar on the Rossini side, and I have no appetite for such complexity. Plus HQP is really tied to the endpoint, no way to have it easily route to many endpoints.
I did not know that Roon was written on Windows, essentially. What is the linux/ROCK support for .Net 6.0?
1 Like
Be aware though, that as long as Rock 2.0 isn’t available, current new NUCs will not boot and thus are paperweights…
1 Like
The NUC I am getting is the top spec NUC suggested in the ROCK web page, that is NUC10i7FNH.
@andybob is this going to become obsolete?
I think the answer to that question has to be Yes for all computers. I don’t know of any reason why the NUC10i7FNH would be deprecated any time soon, but the available range for powerful Cores is going to significantly expand with NET 6.0 on Apple Silicon and ROCK 2.0. Unless your current setup is unbearable waiting for those may yield a more long lived solution. I wish I could give you some idea of timing, but I don’t know.
Rock has been .net 6 for some time, Linux was moved over to it last year. Doing so improved Linux performance massively and is now on par with Windows.
2 Likes
It is pretty unbearable now. I rarely get as mad as I did when posting on this thread.
I ordered the NUC10i7FNH, 500gb Samsung 980 Pro nvme, and 32gb of RAM. A tad overkill but that’s better than underkill. I expect ROCK 2.0 to result in improvements across the board. Also prefer a more appliance solution.
What is in the Nucleus+?
I stopped using the search function altogether, it simply doesn’t work. I have to either use the filter function for my own music or the Qobuz app for streaming. I have superfast internet and the heaviest MBpro available, it’s hard to have better specs, and still it doesn’t work. So I bought a Small Green Computer, designed for large libraries, wired in my network, still doesn’t work. Using the Qobuz app results are immediate.
The issue is Roon software and it has been for a while now, it’s not new. I’ve read many posts on the search function not working, looking for answers. You don’t do in-house testing with large libraries? Shame on you. It should be the standard. If the search works with large libraries, it will also do with smaller ones. But someone fabricated the 0.1% and thus not interesting to take into account. Roon didn’t even try, did they?
The “consider us impressed” is rather passive-agressive, you should get rid of it. It gives people (me) the feeling they’re freaks for having large libraries. No, no, no, it’s people like us why Roon exists at all, right? A media player for people who take music and audio seriously.
I really do like Roon, btw. Apart from lousy playlist views, a very short added/played history and the search function not working it’s good software.
1 Like
My problem is much graver than search. It can take one minute or more to play a LOCAL file. Yes, I hit the play, I get the little blue square next to the track, I wait, wait, wait, a minute sometimes, for the file to play. The SSD that contains these files is connected directly to the mac mini over USB3. Profiling the speed of the drive give me 400MBps read and write. I simply do not understand. And this happens ALL THE TIME.
Mods are volunteer users, not Roon staff. We don’t design the software or write Roon’s help pages.
If you have a problem with search you should open your own Support thread.
How big is your library ? What spec is your Core ? I see SGC are selling i7 and i9 models now.
My library is 3 times that size and Nils Frahm search came up with results in about 1 second
1 Like
What hardware are you running on? What time of day did you search?
Then something is seriously wrong with your setup of its taking that long to play anything.
No kidding!!! Especially since they are local files on a fast drive.
@noris and/or @danny : can you recommend?
I purchased a NUC10i7FNH with a Samsung 500gb nvme boot SSD and 32gb RAM. Have a 4tb SSD to put inside for music storage.
Good enough?
Nucleus + upgraded to 16 GB SSD is what they recommended to me and it works well with a larger library
1 Like