I’d like to try a raspberry Pi instead of using my iMac as my core. But I have no idea which one to get. I primarily stream from a Bluesound Node 2i with roon + TIDAL.
Thanks!
The Pi would act as a streamer, you still need to host Roon Core on a PC of some type.
So that would be of no help here.
I believe from memory there was one version of DietPi I think that was supposed to run a very bare bones Roon Core but that’s another story.
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The Core cannot run on a Pi. The Pi can be used only as an endpoint with the appropriate software supporting Roon. Cores can be Windows, MacOS, Linux, and various supported NAS solutions, or Roon OS for NUC or Nucleus.
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Good luck finding a rpi
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ok, thanks. bummer
Amazon seems to always have them in the US.
I’m happy with my streamer. Possibly Upgrading that to Lumin or try a DAC with my Node 2i in the future. Seems like a mac mini or nucleus is what I need if I wanna give my iMac a break. It’s my only computer at this time.
Or a NUC for more power at lower cost.
What’s a NUC and who sells them?
Amazon…
How good is the build quality of these? Seems that a used mac mini would be a better choice. What do you think?
Either will work, it’s up to you. I would build a NUC, but I’m not a huge Apple fan. Search this site for pros and cons of each.
Well, of course you could build either or. I’m just not a windows fan.
Most use Linux. I think Roon ROCK is built in Linux. It’s a closed system. You just install it, nothing else.
ROCK is built in a manner that allows it to run on Intel NUC hardware only. The drivers provided are tailored to the NUC family of machines. Regular Roon Core works well on Intel and AMD machines.
I don’t believe Roon Labs has ported Roon Core to Apple Silicon Macs. Hopefully, they will do this soon.
Raspberry PI are somewhat slow. With the 4 series, they have adequate address space and memory (my core is running in 4 GB). Roon Server is not currently compiled for the PI 4 or PI 400. Source is not available for home brew builds. Artist, album, and track searches are likely to be slow.
Here, I run Roon Core on and Intel Atom processor (BHYVE virtual machine hosted on TrueNAS, POP_OS Ubuntu variant guest, desktop, and Roon Core as a service. This works well as TrueNAS starts the VM, guest, and Roon Core after the shares are ready. I recommend this arrangement highly. It is less fuss than core on one machine and music on another. Core and music on same machine is OK but back up to something robust.
Artist, album, and track searches (infrequent) are acceptable. I have a middling sized library but most titles are Qobuz so local cache performance is important. More memory would help here as Linux buffer cache would be bigger.
MacOS TimeMachine is a good choice. I’m not familiar with Win11 but believe they have used their copy on write feature to provide at least minimal version rollback. Backup is now in the. Win 11 One Drive interface.
What do you mean that roon hasn’t ported to apple silicon macs? My core is currently on my iMac. But it’s my only computer. So, I was considering getting something else to use for my core. Mac Mini seems like a good choice.
You can run Roon core on a Mac, just not Roon ROCK.
amazon uk has a low stock of rpi 4,but only the 8gb ram version for £82
My understanding is that the Intel image runs under Rosetta 2 Intel IA64 emulation. Eventually, they will compile a “universal” version of the app with native binaries for IA64 and M-series. My understanding is that they are waiting for the Mono version of .net to be released by Microsoft.
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