Would upgrading Mac Mini hardware produce better performance

I’m running Roon on a Mac Mini i5, 2.5 GHz (model 6.1).

I’ve got 12 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard disc. I know an SSD is recommended, and probably a faster processor, but everything seems to be working fine, even with DSP upsampling to DSD 128.

I looked at Activity Monitor and the CPU usage is at 50% and barely a gig of RAM. Is there any reason to think that upgrading hardware would produce better performance?

I found going from Mac Mini to ROCK (on an 5i3 NUC in my case) sounded better. I can’t remember exactly how, but I do recall me being slightly surprised. Suspect it’s all to do with ROCK vs OSX rather than the h/w though.

I picked the NUC up off fleabay for £200. If you did the same you could always sell it on if you don’t think it’s worth it. Or find a dealer to let you try a Nucleus. The 5i3 seems to be fine performance wise as well - does DSD 128 no problem (to one zone).

Depends on what you mean by “better performance”. The SQ should be exactly the same in both cases, as you’re running the same program on the same data. If 50% utilization worries you, a faster processor would drop that down a bit, but you’d still be doing the exact same processing, so…

I’d say, “why worry”? And, “don’t fix what already works”.

SSD will improve things… and on a larger library a faster system will also show much improvements for searching etc. Soundwise ROCK/NUC or Nucleus does have its advantages.

Thanks for the responses. It was SQ I was concerned with–I should have made that clear in my post–and I mentioned CPU usage as it seemed quite moderate for all the DSP happening.

A stripped down OS like Rock removes all the unnecessary activities going on and has the potential to be an improvement in sound quality. Danny mentioned this earlier in the day…I’ll see if I can find the post.

Here it is

If a new machine supports more robust DSP, then you might experience better SQ, but only if your other gear also supports (and can take advantage of) the change.

In my own setup, I haven’t been able to exceed DSD 128; however, that seems to be a limit of my DAC/amp. Swapping a Mac Mini for a SonicTransporter i9 apparently has not removed that constraint on my system. On the other hand, using a more powerful, dedicated music server (the ST i9), does allow me to use more demanding HQ Player settings without the stuttering I’d get on the Mac Mini.

You can add a second hard drive to that Mac Mini. It needs a kit to do so, but they are available relatively cheaply. If you added an SSD you could boot off that and run Roon on OSX. It would be a lot cheaper than buying a new machine. Alternatively you can clone your old hard drive onto a larger SSD.