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Curious to know your ROON hardware

mcb

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I'm running ROCK on a Zotac CI320 nano PLUS - a less stylish Mac Mini clone. It comes with 4GB of memory and a 64GB SSD. The processor is a quad core running at 1.83GHz with boost to 2.16. I have a 256GB USB drive storing music but I mostly stream Tidal. The Zotac is fanless and seems perfectly adequate for the task. I originally thought I would use the Zotac (which I bought as a refurb for $70) simply to test the waters, but now I'm not sure I need anything more.

An original goal was to test DRC with Roon which I initially assumed to be more computationally demanding. The Zotac handles headphone correction via convolution filtering with ease. So I'm wondering if DRC requirements would be any different?
 

samsa

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The Zotac handles headphone correction via convolution filtering with ease. So I'm wondering if DRC requirements would be any different?

FIR filters are FIR filters. Whether you are correcting headphone output or doing room correction, the computational task is pretty much the same.
 

mcb

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FIR filters are FIR filters. Whether you are correcting headphone output or doing room correction, the computational task is pretty much the same.

That's what I was thinking. Here's a screen grab showing the signal path for the headphones - Roon reports 25x processing speed. Which I interpret to be pretty good. :cool: And I recommend this album too!
roon.png
 

Mulder

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I run an older Intel NUC with a i5 something as a server/ROON core. I run a Ubuntu headless server (Linux) and the ROON core on top of that. A Linux server do not have to run all that overhead processes as a Microsoft or MAC do. Linux calms it down.
 

Lonestar1027

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Synology DS9218+ NAS, 16Gb of ram, 16Tb of mech storage, Roon running on a docker on the ssd. Works great!
 

Dimifoot

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MacBook Pro 2013.
Considering a Roon Nucleus+
 

JoachimStrobel

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Intel CoreDuo 2 GHz (similar to an I3), 8 Gbyt Ram, Win10-32b, small SSD, external USB3 Disk, connected via Ethernet and HDMI. Got to warm in my cabinet, powersupply blew, helps to have a spare one.
Old Vaio I5 2Ghz, 8 Gbyt Ram, SSD, external HDD from before, Win10-64b, Ethernet.
PC Hardware is no issue at all. Just leave it alone, run nothing else, and keep Windows updated.
 

Jimbob54

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I don't. When evaluating Roon I set the core server up on my aging HP N54L server running OMV streaming to my NAD C658. Everything worked fine as such but I did not subscribe. I found Roon to be massively overrated and completely unneccessary. For the price they charge it's bordering on scammy for a glorified Allmusic scraper. Deserves the money-grabbing panther IMO.

I agree it is overpriced. But I'm curious what you were using it to actually do. Is there another bit of software that allows me to integrate a streaming library and local/ networked files pretty seamlessly, decent EQ and multi zone playback?
 

Rja4000

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ESXi on NUC10
Main interest is multiroom and DSP.
Drawbacks: Client disconnects too often and I hate Roon radio.
At $500 for life license, cost was ok (but I wanted to test first).
Now at $700, I'm not decided.
 

nick-v

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I'm running Roon Core on an older Cyberpower PC with Intel Core i7 9600k running Windows 10 64bit.

Works great for now, but I'll be adding a Nucleus+ at some point in the near future for better integration with Control4.
 

Jimbob54

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ESXi on NUC10
Main interest is multiroom and DSP.
Drawbacks: Client disconnects too often and I hate Roon radio.
At $500 for life license, cost was ok (but I wanted to test first).
Now at $700, I'm not decided.

Totally agree. Paying 5-6 years upfront in an environment evolving as quickly as this is borderline madness. I wouldn't be surprised to see them split the difference and move to a hefty one off ($250?) plus smaller annual subs. But for me, paying $120 annually, even if I do so for the next decade is still more sensible than $700 now for something that might not be there or be obsolete inside of 2 years
 

GDK

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Totally agree. Paying 5-6 years upfront in an environment evolving as quickly as this is borderline madness. I wouldn't be surprised to see them split the difference and move to a hefty one off ($250?) plus smaller annual subs. But for me, paying $120 annually, even if I do so for the next decade is still more sensible than $700 now for something that might not be there or be obsolete inside of 2 years
They have recently hinted of yet another price rise for Lifetime or even eliminating it altogether. They would rather have everyone on annual memberships, but it's hard to wean yourself off of those chunky lifetime fees coming in.
 

Jimbob54

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They have recently hinted of yet another price rise for Lifetime or even eliminating it altogether. They would rather have everyone on annual memberships, but it's hard to wean yourself off of those chunky lifetime fees coming in.

Ha, I'm an accountant by trade. I can imagine the discussion between sales and accounting about how to treat a lifetime sub purchased today.

The daft thing is , I'm not actually sure what they are offering you with a lifetime sub. My understanding is Roon does not work full stop without a connection to their servers- but they cant commit to keeping the lights on at their end until the end of time.

As long as they dont start lifting the annual fee to make the $700 or more annual more palatable.

Fool me once......!
 

Mulder

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I read in their forum, someone from ROON-labs wrote that the lifetime-purchase is not a long term finacial solution for the company. Someday they will move to annual price only. Gradually rising the price for lifetime I guess, untill very few will be ready to pay for it.
 

Jimbob54

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I read in their forum, someone from ROON-labs wrote that the lifetime-purchase is not a long term finacial solution for the company. Someday they will move to annual price only. Gradually rising the price for lifetime I guess, untill very few will be ready to pay for it.

In all honesty, that sounds like exactly what a shill would say to get a customer in the market to open their wallet wide....today. They absolutely want your $700 today more than they want my hazy desire to renew for $120 in 5 months time. With an even hazier thought to renew again in 17 months.
 

nick-v

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There is a big push towards subscription based recurring monthly (or in this case annual) revenue, which helps to drive higher valuations.
 
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ahofer

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I started on a 7 year-old Samsung laptop, with few problems. I think for streaming you can use older i3 hardware (although Roon saysi5).

That being said, I bought a NUC 10i7 for the permanent core installation (using their ROCK OS install), because I want to try DSP/convolution, and I wanted to stash a small pc away in the closet with my NAS (which is not up to Roon spec). I think DSP and streaming to multiple endpoints is where the hardware demands really come in. DSP is simply processor intensive, and multiple streams also taxes I/O.
 
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