I need Roon hardware help

[CrushingIt]

I want to switch over to Roon and I have most of my plan figured out. I am on a tight budget so I'm trying to be very prudent.

I will eventually have two or three endpoints (Raspberry Pi's for now...uRendu eventually) and I'm big on Tidal integration (fingers crossed)

The one part I can't decide is wether to go with a sonic transporter to hold Roon or to put Roon on a NAS (on an attached SSD)

 

Using an NAS will mean a cheaper QNAP that I will have to add memory to.

 

All my music is stored on usb drives now as ALAC files but will eventually get moved to an NAS as reripped WAV.

 

Generally I believe less is more (no Sonic Transporter) but am I missing something?

 

Thanks,

Steve

[tboooe]

Unfortunately only you can answer if the quality of the server (power, ethernet, etc) makes a difference in the sound. Many folks on these forums will argue that the server can have a fairly important part in how the music ultimately sounds. With that being said, I would personally go with something dedicated to run Roon.

[pvanosta]

Second that. I have had poor results with running Roon Core (the server) on a NAS (Synology 1513+ with dual core Intel Atom and upgraded to max Ram of 4 GB). I had an unused MS Surface pro lying around (Intel Core i5 and 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD). I installed Roon Core on that and connected to my LAN via usb-2-ethernet dongle . Roon runs fine on that system and I have 200,000 tracks in my library. A Surface pro (first generation) can be found for 250$. YMMV, but you did say you were on a budget.

[eintom]

and your library is still on the nas?

 

i have a bit slow 1813+ too for roon core with a small ssd just for roon library and 4gb ram.

thinking to do an upgrade to a NUC with NAS Storage or a complete new NAS (QNap i5), but they are not realy cheap

[pvanosta]

Yes the library is still on the NAS. This way works with your 1813+ (same hardware as my 1513+). Roon will very likely not run consistently on your Syno otherwise, especially with Hi rez and DSD files.

[CrushingIt]

Thanks for the idea. I'm not really an MS person, but that's an idea I hadn't thought of. I'm starting to think the Sonic Transporter is the way to go for me. I can build from there. Add an NAS later. Upgrade the Roon endpoints later and then start on power supplies.

I just read thru a thread on keeping noise from ethane out of the way.....now I have a whole other problem to worry about!!

[eintom]

cause my Syno is very slow (mostly for searching in roon), i switched the roon core for a test to my PC (i7 3,4Ghz 5 years old, SSD, Music on HDD in PC)

Roon core is much faster, as expected, sound ist a bit lighter from that source, but ok.

 

then i switched the music library in roon (on PC) back to my NAS instead the HD in PC.

roon searching and browsing is nearly as fast as with the HD in PC an much faster than with roon core on NAS.

 

so i know now, that a small PC (NUK for example) with roon on SSD and library on my Synology would be good for me.

[Size]

if you look at the Roon website, they talk about Windows and Linux and MAC OS. Running Roon Core on any these works fine, sizing (CPU, memory) depends on your library size. I'm using Intel i5 NUC with SDD and 8GB RAM with Buffalo NAS. Get fastest disk possible for Roon database, keep music library on NAS. Use Raspberry pi (I'm using Pi3 with WIFI disabled) for endpoint with Roon Bridge, USB (better than cheapo 0- I'm using Audioquest for now) with UpTone REGEN (to eliminate noise). I use an iPad for a controller. Sounds great. Have fun!

[Ncore1]

I want to switch over to Roon and I have most of my plan figured out. I am on a tight budget so I'm trying to be very prudent.

I will eventually have two or three endpoints (Raspberry Pi's for now...uRendu eventually) and I'm big on Tidal integration (fingers crossed)

The one part I can't decide is wether to go with a sonic transporter to hold Roon or to put Roon on a NAS (on an attached SSD)

 

Using an NAS will mean a cheaper QNAP that I will have to add memory to.

 

All my music is stored on usb drives now as ALAC files but will eventually get moved to an NAS as reripped WAV.

 

Generally I believe less is more (no Sonic Transporter) but am I missing something?

 

Thanks,

Steve

 

I use a Synology NAS 1815+ and it runs Roon just fine, no problems at all but yes you do need one with a reasonable intel cpu, but it really doesn't have to be an iX. I also use RPis as endpoints. On the "critical" one I do use an Intona galvanic isolator. I think the the urendu is unnecessary. Sonic transporter is just a small computer. Spend the money on the NAS.

 

ipad, Samsung tablet and Samsung phone as controllers.

 

The Pis running roon bridge have been 100%, not turned off in months.

 

Oh BTW, when you rerip do it to flac, you are justwasting drive space with wave. Also wave doesn't support metadata (yes I know it can but.......).

 

I would recommend dbpoweramp to rip/convert.