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Roon Core, Intel NUC and Akasa

Robert

Tapehead
I've blown hot and cold with Roon.

Appreciate the slick interface, feature set and information mining but always felt the pricing was bit toppy and I also had some intermittent performance issues - app freezing, glitches, slowdowns.

In the past I had the Roon Core (aka the server) and the Roon app/remote running on the same machine, a Microsoft Surface 7, which on paper is up to the job with a Core i5 and 8gb of ram. However running the Core on the Surface meant that everything was wireless, not just the various endpoints. This coupled with the loads on the fanless Surface was I suspect giving the less than stellar performance.

TBF a few forum members had advised not to run Core and App on the same laptop, notably AndyU.

I recently updated my main PC to 11th gen Intel NUC which left my old 8th gen going spare.
For some time now I've used Akasa fanless cases for my NUCs and these work very well, so I decided to install Roon ROCK (the Core) on the old NUC - still a powerful little box using 8th gen i7, 32gb ram (way overkill - you need 4!) and a 256gb SATA SSD drive for the system drive with a 1TB nvme for the library drive.

Anyway, installing Roon ROCK was a breeze and everything worked perfectly. You need to download and install codes but the process was easy. ROCK is a tiny Linux install dedicated to running the audio server.
It runs headless of course with nothing connected to the unit other than power and ethernet.
You access the unit via a web interface. Boot time is about 15 seconds, so you don't have to leave it running when not in use.

Superfast, no glitches and I can run as many lossless streams as I wish without issue.
In the images below you can see a photo of the Akasa case, which I recommend for any NUC PC, and three different steams playing on a Surface, Pixelbook and Pixel phone (Windows, Chrome OS, Android).

So if you want to try Roon I strongly recommend running the core (ROCK) on its own PC with an ethernet connection, you get a far better experience.

20210418_133255 by Rob Holt, on Flickr

finpge by Rob Holt, on Flickr
 
Likewise... Akasa fanless case with i5 Gen 7 - 16 Gb ram and 256 SSD for selected albums and back-up. Music on an 8TB external USB drive with multiple back-ups.
Keces P8 power supply for NUC and USB drive. Works faultlessly.

IMG-5813.jpg
 
I originally ran Roon on an HP Microserver n54l running (unsupported) WHS 2011. It mostly worked fine, apart from an issue I had with the marker that shows where in a song playback is, freezing every so often.
Last summer I moved to a NUC8i5BEH running ROCK, and I couldn’t be happier. The NUC is still in its original case as there’s no need for fanless - it’s on a different floor to the stereo - and gives me no issues whatsoever, zipping along with whatever I throw at it.

Mick
 
Just recently bought an Intel NUC8i3BEH to run ROCK. 8GB RAM, 250GB NVMe SSD & 1TB SSD for storage. Pretty straightforward to fit the components, update the BIOS and install ROCK. Don’t need a fanless case right now as the NUC sits quietly doing it’s thing in a separate room.
 
Just recently bought an Intel NUC8i3BEH to run ROCK. 8GB RAM, 250GB NVMe SSD & 1TB SSD for storage. Pretty straightforward to fit the components, update the BIOS and install ROCK. Don’t need a fanless case right now as the NUC sits quietly doing it’s thing in a separate room.
What do you use as your endpoint?
 
Likewise... Akasa fanless case with i5 Gen 7 - 16 Gb ram and 256 SSD for selected albums and back-up. Music on an 8TB external USB drive with multiple back-ups.
Keces P8 power supply for NUC and USB drive. Works faultlessly.

IMG-5813.jpg

Have you noted any difference in sound qaulity running on a highrer spec PC, and addingteh LPS?
 
I don’t think the Gen 7 is a hi-spec computer. Roon is very light, even with upsampling and DSP. The PS reduces noise and digital hash giving a more relaxed sound and better low level ambience and room sound.
 


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