ATX power supply (I recommend EVGA or Corsair (advertisement)), CPU and Stock Cooler: Remember that Roon Core is not going to be directly connected to your hifi setup but is rather a background server. Shopping list as of February 2017 (both Intel and AMD): High-End CPU: The Surface Book should work fine unless you have a very large library and/or do intensive upsampling DSP. Win server 2016, Audiophile Optimizer, HQPlayer using a poly-sinc filter to upsample to DSD512. Roon will support most AirPlay devices, whether Apple-made or third party, and you should see them picked up by the Roon Core on your apps. TheHighFlyingBirds Well-known Member. Not a lightweight task that a cheap mini computer would typically perform. Your Spring certainly does though. Ouch! 3) something to control playback and display the information about your library. And with Roon Labs ambitious plans to keep adding new features, Roon core is likely to demand even more power in the future. In summary, this should give you a Roon Core server that is not only powerful but also looks great and will serve its duties for years to come. If we were to implement Roon, we would want to implement it at the highest quality. Which specs will he need for the Mac Mini? Over a network the server PC can be in a different room than the audio system if that is an issue. All of these require a good external PSU to really shine though. I do already have an Aurender N100, as well as a MicroRendu in my office system. Roon Labs stated that performance would suffer significantly if it wasn’t at least running on an i7 with multiple Gigabytes of RAM and super-fast SSDs. I do my best to keep information as universal as possible. It’s the closest to spinning a disc. Yeah I agree with @firedog and @MarkS comments before me. Roon costs $500 a year to run the Core server, and the clients are free. SSD or HDD Drive. Alternatively, get someone to help you and please observe all the safety regulations in your country), why not DIY your own Roon Core machine? And, for why? Silverstone Tek GD07B Aluminum Extended ATX / SSI-EEB / SSI-CEB HTPC Computer Case with Lockable Front Door Cases – Black (advertisement) Let’s look at our available options in detail. Two very different things. Roon Core boots up in just 1.8 seconds and there are two variants; i3 or i7 to choose from both with an integral SSD for the operating system with an option to add an SSD or HDD hard drive. Click here to learn more. This compact, fanless Intel® Core™ i7 8th Gen ROON Server PC has been custom built to match the specification of the ROON Nucleus + at a fraction of the price, with the addition of a more powerful I ntel® Core ™ i7 8th generation processor for improved performance. Advanced Networking. Depending on what type of output you need, these can go from very cheap and simple, (a RaspBerry Pi) to cheap but rather damn good (a Pi with an audiophile output board from Allo or HifiBerry, or an Allo USBridge) to more expensive (elaborate PSUs, the Auralic, Lumin, Sonore, or SoTM streamers) to rather expensive (Trinnov). Win10 i9 9900KS/GTX1060 HQPlayer4>Win10 NAA, Parasound JC1>"Naked" Quad ESL63/Tannoy PS350B subs<100Hz. If you need to pay less, I have added an AMD version which is almost 150 Euros cheaper but is potentially less power efficient. Assuming this resolves the issue, you would then start re-adding the removed elements one by one until you find the element that triggers the problem. WARNING: Working with electricity and/or electrical devices is potentially hazardous! From the outset, Roon was intended to produce a rich metadata experience. I literally fell off my chair when I saw the pricing. Quote; Link to post. But it is a personal choice, really. NOTE: This is strictly informational and assembled to the best of my knowledge and experience, I am not taking responsibility for compatibility of the PC components. Depending on whether you want to upsample in Roon, the type of upsampling, and the number of simultaneous streams you're sending out, you might also want something beyond the base system. Price: about 144 Euros from Amazon, Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz (PC4-24000) C15 Memory Kit – Black (advertisement) It is the brains which tells your music what to do and … In my experience, using HQPlayer's best filters (poly-sinc-*) there is little benifit going just to DSD128. I had to separate my ROON Server and client from 1 machine to ROON Core (a cheap and crap DELL server). ), and it ran fine. It’s the “Core” (server backend of Roon) and its massive system requirements. Other than that, if you use HQP, the power requirements are the same as what HQP would require to do its thing, maybe a little bit more if you're using Roon's DSP to do room correction. So the cheapest way to do it is to exploit and old desktop or laptop. No, you don't need to pay for a 2nd Roon licence, you pay one license per music library. ‘For best sound quality,  I suggest a NUC or SonicTransporter with separate PSU (Hynes, Uptone, etc.). If they already have a Upnp enabled receiver or streamer then chances are that Roon will see that and be able to play to it. Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO – CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan (RR-212E-20PK-R2) (advertisement) It also comes with a disaster recovery mechanism. They don't offer DSD support, but most of the other features you'd want are on-board. Dont’t get me wrong though – a NAS makes a great storage device and it can be inexpensive, too. 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It does require some fiddling. Alternatively, an Intel NUC (advertisement) sounds like an interesting option if you prefer the smaller footprint of a desktop computer but with Windows or Linux. Thanks for all of your thoughts, thus far. This however means you need to keep your machine turned on 24 hours a day. But times have changed. Price: about 337 Euros on Amazon, Basic CPU: I have speced out a very powerful Intel 6th generation Skylake server below and your total cost should be well under 1000 Euros. Synology DS916+ > SoTM dCBL-CAT7 > Netgear switch > SoTM dCBL-CAT7 > dCS Vivaldi Upsampler (Nordost Valhalla 2 power cord) > Nordost Valhalla 2 Dual 110 Ohm AES/EBU > dCS Vivaldi DAC (David Elrod Statement Gold power cord) > Nordost Valhalla 2 xlr > Absolare Passion preamp (Nordost Valhalla 2 power cord) > Nordost Valhalla 2 xlr > VTL MB-450 III (Shunyata King Cobra CX power cords) > Nordost Valhalla 2 speaker > Kaiser Kaewero Classic /JL Audio F110 (Wireworld Platinum power cord). For a good, high-performance user experience you'll want some thing better than cheap junk -- maybe around $500 for a PC depending on storage needs. hardware cost if browsing is unacceptable: around $100 or so. And it comes with a pre-loaded operating system (Mac OS), no need to purchase extra licenses or learn Linux. March 1, 2018 in General Forum. Core doesn’t necessarily have to include a music containing storage drive, which can be elsewhere on the network, but obviously will for the likes of QNAP Roon NAS drives. Can either of these be used in this capacity? If you want to get something less affordable, you can of course tweak this type of setup with all sorts of fancy power supplies and USB or network devices that appeal to audiophiles. Have an inexpensive low-power, silent streamer in the sound room. I've used and can recommend both. Sorry for the confusion. This morning I tried to open Roon on my Ipad but Roon Remote can’t find Roon Core. To run Core as a high sound quality PC is something else again. On top of that, you still need a computer with a DVD drive for ripping music before being able to move the tracks to your NAS. It might be easier to answer your actual question if you describe your friends current system. For a bit under 1000 Euros you get an i5 processor (although not the latest Skylake generation – Apple is hopefully updating the Mini soon) and 8GB of RAM plus 250GB PCIe SSD storage. So please double-check for up-to-date prices. Not a terrible choice because stuff like Roon actually works very well. I ran Roon on a Synology NAS D916 just to see if I could do it (? You can still access your comments by clicking here. Living Room/Kitchen: RPi 3B+ running RoPieee to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. It works well with the Elac Discovery and is very easy to set up. If not then buying such a receiver or amp is probably achievable on a reasonable budget. Windows 10 can also easily be remote-controlled from your tablet if you get stuck. Roon built a custom based operating system around the Intel NUC board. The benefit becomes significant at DSD256, but it only goes next level once you hit DSD512. If we're talking about a ladder DAC like the Spring and discrete topology in the Big 7 there is no SRC stage to bypass because they don't need to do SRC. I believe you can add 16GB as an opion but that’s it – the Mini is not upgradeable or extensible in any way. Next up would be a custom server. The ELAC includes a DAC and  analog outs, and looks like an audio component, which makes it more expensive . Regardless, I only recommend products or services I own and/or use personally and believe will add value to my readers. In a high-end Roon setup, Roon Core runs on a dedicated device, a Roon server. To the Op. Asus uATX DDR3 AM3+ AMD 760G + SB710 USB 3.0 HDMI uATX AMD Motherboard (advertisement) If yes: do it that way, hardware cost: 0. Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup. One important aspect is the operating system choice. So, if you want to know exactly what the Roon music server is before you sign up, read on to find the big questions answered below. But there was always one thing that drove me nuts. Now that it’s set up, it’s basically fire and forget; I just go to the output settings window on the Roon software interface and select the appropriate output device. The microRendu can certainly act as a Roon endpoint. What happens if Roons system requirements are kicked up a notch? For a good, high-performance user experience you'll want some thing better than cheap junk -- maybe around $500 for a PC depending on storage needs. Or for instance an Innuos ZENith which uses a non spinning chip based ‘solid state’ hard drive with its Linux computer server with Roon Core, and is a CD ripper too. Have you actually tried Roon? Have any of you actually sat back and wondered what all the fuss, expense and worst; uncertainty/inconsistent results is all about ? I am also considering doing this, but do have both a desktop pc that could be utilized, as well as a Microsoft Surface Book  (i5 processor, 8gb of ram) which I would prefer to use, if possible. You could probably do both (new) for under $600. It also features a bit perfect Teac CD drive for ripping your CD collection. This is beneficial if feeding a DS-style DAC (ie, Sabre, AKM, etc) because it allows for the possibility of skipping the SRC stage of the DAC which by itself will improve SQ. If you can build a PC (it’s really not that hard! You really should be aiming for DSD512 , but achieving DSD256 is cheaper and easier. Want to tweak: see @firedog's reply. You know, we should build something as a community that could be used as a simple low-cost minimal-tweeky playback platform to address this. Many people instead go the streaming route; run Roon/HQPlayer in a dirty but cheap PC and stream the music from that into a HQPlayer network endpoint streaming device with some form of network isolation/conditioning between the Roon/HQPlayer PC and the streaming device. A big annoyance with Roon is how it can't parse single file CD rips and doesn't support some DSD file formats. Roon costs $500 a year to run the Core server, and the clients are free. FWIW - I ran Roon on a QNAP NAS and it was perfectly good. Here’s How, Amazon Music HD Compatible Streaming Devices. So, given that you've mentioned that our MicroRendu's can act as a Roon endpoint, how exactly would we implement Roon most effectively and affordably?