Yes - always SSD cause it is preventative at least and beneficial at best. I don’t like mechanical noise (spinning anything). I had a QNAP NAS in my great room for a week and my wife said that the POS goes… clack, click, spat, zip… could not even watch TV. So, could you reduce the access… yes… could I get rid of the clickity clack sound… I had no choice… went SSD inside N+…
I haven’t used Windows for at least 15 years.
Roon - to their credit - make Roon Rock available to download for free and that’s what lots of people do (people clever than us), and put it on a NUC, and I think the Tranquil thing without an OS is effectively a NUC. All you need is a device with an Intel processor.
Innuos, who’ve been at it for 10 years, a lot longer than Roon, and have developed their own dedicated OS called “innuOS”. All it does is enough to control the device functionality, music library connections, etc. and, since Roon came along, it hosts Roon. It probably uses a gnat’s fart’s worth of power. The interface is very 1970’s to keep the graphics processing to an absolute minimum.
@stevensegal - The Roon ROCK was developed specifically for the Nucleus (NUC). So, if you go NUC and download the ROCK for NUC you are at the price point you discussed. The NUC is cheaper than the Nucleus+…
[edit] - the Nucleus is actually $1500 and N+ is $2500. If you don’t use a lot of DSD functions, Nucleus is just fine. If you are running Convolution Filtering, auto-volume… N+ is better… I have never seen my N+ go lower than 50% with double DSD and a few DSP functions running… also, the N+ is capable of handling up to 300,000 library tracks. I had over 100,000 tracks and no issue at all…
ROCK is an OS designed to run on any Intel processor. People like Tranquil have been making NUCs (Next Unit of Computing) for years. Roon gives ROCK away so lots of people build NUCs for $500 and pay Roon $500 for a Roon license.
There are endless discussions on Roon Community on what is the best NUC, people will build them for you if you ask nicely and pay, but Roon sensibly built their own and they clearly stated they did so for people like you and me not clever enough to build their own.
I think you may be confusing a NUC with Nucleus. If not, my apologies.
@stevensegal - no confusion, they are separate platforms. The NUC is a cheaper and more configurable HW platform. Yes, the debate goes on forever in Roon Labs…
I think the Nucleus is better than a regular NUC though.
They have removed extraneous hardware and it is supposed to be optimised for audio with low electrical noise, including the switch mode power supply that comes with it (I would still recommend a linear power supply but obviously that is an extra expense).
If you handle one and open it up you can see for yourself.
I could have easily constructed my own NUC for a fraction of the price but the reason I went with the Nucleus was the elegance of the solution, including it being completely fanless and not getting very hot.
That has a lot to do with the bespoke case which acts as a giant heatsink.
@drarifakhtar - Yes, I have been trying to make this abundantly clear for the last hour… I even explained I have a low IQ and a knuckle dragging Yank and that did not work… round and round we go… Nucleus is a single point solution extremely elegant in functionality… completely stripped down.
So, my setup; very, very simple
Nucleus+ w/ 18V Sbooster LPS; AC12 to P20
JMaxwell (12in) “data only” USB to Matrix
Giga FOIL w/ Sbooster & Ultra (Ethernet); AC12 to P20
AQVOX-SE switch w/ Sbooster & Ultra (Ethernet); AC12 to P20
AQVOX CAT7 25-50cm cables)
very easy for the low IQ Yank
Well, Roon was started by a bunch of people from Sooloos which was acquired by Merdian in 2008. So the Roon folks have been doing this kind of thing for at least 11 years.
In the UK the $ prices become £ prices, because of 20% sales tax, 3% duty and shipping.
The Nucleus i3 is indeed good for most users not doing all that crazy stuff in 8 rooms at the same time. Innuos uses an Intel chip slightly less powerful than the i3 but more efficient and less noisy than the i3. Innuos told me that if you do all the crazy stuff in 8 rooms, get a Nucleus+. My system operates at 24/192, so DSD is irrelevant.
I only went on Roon when it hosted Qobuz a few months ago, as I’ve been with Qobuz for 5 or 6 years, and I hope we can agree that Roon is the best thing that ever happened to digital music management.
@stevensegal - I used double DSD (DSF files) to explain the processing power of the N+… I have over 1,000 hi res albums that are a mixture of 24/44, 88, 96… and DSD. DSD files require the most processing power…
Correct! When I first decided to upgrade my audio I went to a store and they had a Sooloos unit, I thought it a nice idea except you had to get up to touch the screen and it could only handle 500 albums. So I bought a Linn Akurate DS and a network drive. Sooloos and Roon may be the same people, but very different products, not least one is hardware and the other software only.
You don’t even have to be a non computer person. I just realised that trying to source the parts needed to construct something of similar quality audio wise would actually be a lot more hassle than just buying the Nucleus+ and even then there would be no guarantee. I wanted the best sound quality so it was either the Nucleus or another similarly priced server.
The thing that put me off some of the other choices was the ability to run Roon natively and the lack of SSD options. Frankly I don’t understand why Innuous are charging huge amounts for larger rotating hard drives (which are dirt cheap) and not even giving the option of an SSD.
I could understand SSDs would be more expensive, but the price differentials between different sized rotating hard drive versions are more than the cost of a large top brand SSD in many cases and they don’t give you a driveless option. I’m also not sure what their policy is on the warranty if you swap the drive yourself.
@drarifakhtar - I have an MSEE w/ DSP focus… just having fun… I love my N+ and get tired of people thinking Roon sucks cause the run it on a laptop w/ Win 10 and a ton of bloated apps… all fun, just trying to help the forum with different approaches…
I love my SSDs… you hear that… wait a minute, I don’t hear anything… BOOM!
My 4TB 860 EVO just ran me $600 so they are expensive. My 4TB HDD used for backup duty was like $200 if memory serves me…
I have hundreds of high res albums and millions available on Qobuz. I purchased precisely 5 DSD albums. Innuos converts them to PCM.
About 2 years ago Quboz announced they were looking at streaming DSD files. They never bothered. I can understand that.
@stevensegal - yeah, just using double DSD as a bench mark for processing power needed and threw in the multiple DSP functions in conjunction to drive the point home… the N+ has a lot of power and can also handle a very large library… The first thing I did was try to get it to go below 100% and I have never seen it below 50%. However, not running 5.1 or surround sound…
I don’t think it will ever happen. There just isn’t the demand. I think if anything they may go with MQA since that is where the buzz is now. It’s a shame though, DSD is great. I’ve never really heard any improvement with MQA on the other hand although that may be because the only MQA source I have is the Bridge II.
I agree that any noisy computer in an audio system is just plain pointless and I never had one. I used SSD in my Auralic, but for Innuos it is not necessary. That said the Innuos Zenith uses SSD because people want that option, even if there is little benefit. The only benefit is that SSD are more reliable, but the chance of a SATA drive dying in 5 years is about 1%.
The earliest music servers, going back 10 years, used a version of Windows Media Server. I briefly had one, before sending it back. You’d be listening to music and Microsoft would send an update, it would stop playing and reboot. Or just stop playing for no reason. They then went to bespoke software or Linux.
OK, so I just finished pruning, cleaning, gathering cover art w/ dBpoweramp and Perfect TUNES and I just took the plunge w/ Qobuz (sublime) for a year. OK… so I’m thinking man let’s go and get some of that hi res downloads for cheap… So I looked at jazz/cool and found 19 non US and 18 US… AYFKM!
I have over 100 albums of smooth jazz and I’m a no body… then was looking at 24/44 for $18 and asked myself WTF did I just get into… then I relaxed in my chair and steamed 24/96 instead of that crappy MQA and settled down…
@stevensegal - give up the HDD/SSD ship… it sailed years ago… reliability, sound, access… COST sucks… yes… can not argue that… or every person on the planet would be using SSD
There’s more life in a Dodo than MQA.
Qobuz want their customers to stream high res PCM, not MQA. Qobuz also make half their money selling downloads, especially high res. I don’t think you can download MQA, so no point in offering it. And why pay royalties to MQA when you can offer the high res PCM?