Sure, but i think there is room for direct user feedback in our small intimate community. 
you can always relativize every discussion. Maybe some sales guys are interested if sales are not as good as intended. Maybe i am totally wrong… why are you taking part in that? If you don‘t like the arguments, just ignore - dont‘t read ;). Sorry, this was not a serious statement, but the same statemnt you are using for the pricing debate.
Can we stay on topic here … remember discuss the argument not the people making their case.
1 Like
@Ramona_Kollar-Neuber – we have NUC + ROCK for people that think Nucleus/Nucleus+ is too expensive. We didn’t have to offer that at all, but we did, and we charge nothing for it.
Building hardware that we sell mostly as direct-sales is not a direction interesting to our business goals, and selling through “channel” requires margin for the middle-men.
8 Likes
Is it about price and middleman and checking a manufacturer about the costs of used parts in the nucleus ?
We are intruding in foreign workspaces here, that’s a bit unpleasant .
It always feels more like our own greed not to let people earn any money out of us, or at least try to control the amount .
With manufacturers like Roon people are even more strict, because they are open for discussion . I installed a 4 TB SSD in the Nucleus +, there is no place @ Samsung i could share any thoughts about pricing …
I am more than happy with what I got, thx for that .
Rgds hpb
1 Like
I understand that in this business model, the dealer needs to make money. Still, for selfish reasons, I wish it was cheaper. 
Under $1000 for the base model Nucleus, and I’d be in.
I’d be happy to build my own NUC with ROCK, but what I really want is Control4 integration which is limited to the Nucleus. How about, as a middle ground, make the Control4 integration a paid add-on for Roon on other core devices. I’d pay a few hundred dollars for that.
Just a thought.
1 Like
The rule of thumb for electronics produced in small volume is that the retail price is 5x the total cost (parts + labor). The Nucleus(+) definitely counts as small volume: large volume is e.g. the iPhone at 100+ million units per year, and then the retail price goes to about 3x the cost of building the unit.
Recall the the first or second most expensive part on most Hi-Fi equipment is the case. Having held a Nucleus in my hand, I can tell you that it’s high quality metalwork, and that doesn’t come cheap in small volume.
I’m pretty sure the parts for a Nucleus cost more than $300 once you include the case, so it’s not a ripoff. Recall that the wholesale cost of the unit would typically be about 60% of the retail price, so the retailer likely gets the largest slice of the pie.
If you look at silent alternatives, they’re not cheap either, and look rather industrial for the living room.
Personally, I bought an i5 Surface Pro & Ethernet dock for about $1300. Silent. I don’t get ROCK, but I can use the ASIO driver for one of my DACs to unlock its full potential. I also got a nice touchscreen for that price.
You pay your money and take your choice … but the total is going to add up if you want to be fanless.
3 Likes
When I bought my SonicTransporter i7 to replace my NUC, Andrew of Small Green Computer told me that it uses all 4 cores of the i7 whereas the Nucleus only uses two. Here is the quote from Andrew’s email:
“The Roon NUCLEUS is almost twice the price and it’s only a dual core i7! The sonicTransporter i7 is a fully quad core i7 desktop CPU. Much faster than your NUC.”
Fit and finish look fine to me, equal to that of a medium priced home theater receiver.
Nucleus is computer. What about software cost of any computer especially in small volume and OS of Nucleus in particularly?
How do you assess the intellectual value of the product? For example the cost of Windows 10 is several hundred dollars but including millions of sales.
Having held a nucleus in my hands, my impression is it’s a fantastic case, very heavy, and probably worth every penny. Expensive doesn’t always mean ripoff. I’ll wait for version 2 which will hopefully take a 15mm hard drive.
1 Like
The NUCLEUS hardware is nice but it’s basically a NUC motherboard in a custom enclosure and a good quality laptop power supply. Roon’s NUCLEUS price has to cover the cost of maintaining the NUCLEUS software distribution. Roon subscriptions cover part of that cost but not the cost of maintaining the custom Linux distribution matched to the included Roon codebase. They’re spreading the cost of several software engineers over small product sales.
NUCLEUS is for those who don’t have the basic Linux admin chops needed to install Linux and Roon server on a NUC. If NUCLEUS can extend Roon’s reach to this community in a manner NUCLEUS customers can take pride in, that’s enough.
I guess the Nucleus is a great door-opener for Roon in the Dealer-Network. People not knowing Roon will see that fine device in the showroom, the Dealer will answer and demonstrate Roon’s software because this time, they will get one’s share of the cake. I guess that is the reason why direct-sales (like danny said above) are not Roons prio: selling hardware to the existing community would be much easier directly ;).
The Nucleus is the way to sell Roon to the people in the outside world of the internet, the guys walking to a hifi-studio and leaving with a Bluesound or a 3K-DAC.
3 Likes
Well done :). I am in marketing myself and – after initial beeing “sad” about your choice for customers like me, i thought about the reason for your strategy. you could easily boost the subs with a cheaper but nice device like that – like Amazon does. But i understand now, and hope this will lead to a strong hardware-base for Roon.
I remember myself at the hifi-studio some time ago, the salesman presented a few sound-systems to us and used Roon for it (i didn’t knew Roon at this time). I was curious about the “software”, but he rather was after providing info about the speakers he wanted to sell. The Nucleus will change this situation for the better!
OT: What really matters now: Get more services on board!
Thank you!
Recall that ROCK is a Linux distribution customized for running Roon and nothing else. A combination of GPL-licensed code and market forces mean that Linux distributions are available at no cost to the end user (they may pay $$$ for tech support, but that’s a separate service offering). You’ll notice that Roon Labs gives ROCK away for free if you want to assemble a NUC to run it on… Roon Labs primarily makes money selling Roon subscriptions; Nucleus is a product to get them into the audio salons.
If you are not a developer of ROCK then give a source of information and tell what Linux distribution specifically you have in mind.
And OS of Nucleus is not ROCK.
1 Like
From danny…
I know 
.
1 Like
Hehe I know you know. For information for others. You asked for a source
1 Like
Sorry but this actually misses in a big way. Nucleus looks like it was designed for a direct sales model that got changed mid stream to a retail sales model
- Dealer is not making enough $$. I have heard that over and over
- Price is too high and the effort to sell at retail isn’t worth it. Where is the Nucleus marketing campaign to create demand? What really is the incentive to sell it? No demand, no go at retail…
- The Nucleus has no “it” factors to get attention on the retail shelf. U need to have customers asking what that is. A desire to own it. A generic looking box isn’t it. (Lit logo, bigger ,cooler box, color, etc.). (Y
- Finally, it has no it factors under the hood to create some demand. Very modest specs to say the least
Price to High for whom? Surely it depends on how much disposable income one has. There are enough well healed people who want and can afford, the best…