Will this work?

Hello there

I don’t know much about hifi and would love to have some help on finding the solution. I’m at my parents place. They have the following:

  • Roon (to be bought or still waiting for separate libraries in next Roon release so that I can use my subscription)
  • Mac mini 2014 on MacOS Sierra (classic HDD)
  • Rotel RA-12
  • KEF Q700

Goal: I would like to play music in upsampling 192k or DSD128.

I’m considering adding a cheap DAC: would the Topping D10S works?

How do I connect it to the Rotel? Do I need to use a regular RCA cable and on “AUX” or “Pre-out”?

I’m curious: if you don’t know much about hifi, why would you want to do this?

4 Likes

Yeah that should work. You connect the DAC to the Hotel with RCAs and you can really use any of the RCA inputs on the Rotel but AUX is fine. Not pre-out though as I think that is an output

You might find this useful

Julian, you are back in France? Or at least not here in Singapore?

Yes sorry mate. Didn’t have the time to say goodbye. Maybe I’ll come back.

Stay safe my friend…most importantly you really want to have Roon installed on an SSD drive, music can be on a HDD no issues.

Yes but opening a mini is tough for me! Maybe if I buy an external USB drive and put Roon on it, will it work? There is no USB-C on the 2014 mini, though. Might be useless to use USB-A?

You ideally need a Mac with ssd built in. Or any computer with SSD boot drive will probably be fine if it was made in the last 5-7 years.

But it all comes down to how big the library will be and in you plan any dsp related usage.