Checking to see if anyone works a Roon Nucleus in India and their experience with it. I have been having trouble using my MAC as Roon Core and looking for sources to procure the Nucleas to replace the laptop as the core. AV Shack in Delhi say they have it in stock. Would be grateful to know if they are a reliable supplier. Thanks.
Roon Nucleus
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I found it listed online at theaudio.co (The Audio Company). I've bought from them a few times before and they are great people to deal with.
Did you also look into building a Roon ROCK? A Roon Nucleus is basically an Intel NUC board with an SSD and RAM, in a really nice fanless chassis.
The Nucleus would lighten your wallet by a figure a bit north of 1.5L. Building a ROCK with an 8th Gen Intel i5 NUC kit, a 250GB m.2 drive and 8GB of RAM would cost you something between 29K and 32K.
Roon themselves provide detailed instructions on how to build a Roon Rock with a commercially available Intel NUC Kit. A ROCK would run the same OS the Nucleus runs, and would work headless. Setting one up is not very hard to do, from what I can see.
I'm planning to build a ROCK with an i5 NUC in a month or so.
Edit: Your post pushed me over the fence, heh heh. I ordered an Intel i5 NUC kit, a 240GB m.2 SSD and 8GB RAM just now. It looks like I'll be building a Roon ROCK over this weekend, if everything gets delivered by Saturday.
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Go with NUC8i5BEH, it's going real cheap in Amazon, (around 22K).
That's exactly what I bought just now. I'd been looking at the listings for quite a few weeks now, wondering if I should, or whether I should wait. At these prices, it was hard to resist.
Thanks. Wow - I’ll wait to hear how that project of yours goes.
ajaipuriyar
Active Member
I have been using the nucleus for a couple of years. Got it from Amsterdam though.
It's a solid piece of box with quick boot and stable operation.
Doesn't come with a an internal ssd. Not necessary but if you need it, You have to add your own.
NUC also works well, but I didn't want to go through the 'haasle'
I do not connect it directly to my dac so I have not yet upgraded the power supply but if you plan to, please keep some budget for a good linear power supply.
Maybe sometime like the Farad super 3 or SBooster.
It's a solid piece of box with quick boot and stable operation.
Doesn't come with a an internal ssd. Not necessary but if you need it, You have to add your own.
NUC also works well, but I didn't want to go through the 'haasle'
I do not connect it directly to my dac so I have not yet upgraded the power supply but if you plan to, please keep some budget for a good linear power supply.
Maybe sometime like the Farad super 3 or SBooster.
Thanks. That's really helpful. I bit the bait and booked one myself. Hope to have it in the coming week.
ajaipuriyar
Active Member
Gr8. Let us know your experience with it.
ajaipuriyar
Active Member
I have, but not in my setup.
if you are using it purely as a core and connected to network switch, then there is no discernible SQ difference.
but if you are connected directly to DAC with usb out, then nucleus has certain optimisations wrt noise removal.
This is a white paper about how nucleus is optimised for audio-
docs.google.com
bottomline is nucleus is a single purpose device with no need for separate bios updates, patches etc.
It’s an idiot proof device with no management hassles and does it job.
Plus it looks the part with solid metal build. Definitely helps with WAF.
is it worth the additional price? that’s for each individual to decide.
if you are using it purely as a core and connected to network switch, then there is no discernible SQ difference.
but if you are connected directly to DAC with usb out, then nucleus has certain optimisations wrt noise removal.
This is a white paper about how nucleus is optimised for audio-
Nucleus white paper
bottomline is nucleus is a single purpose device with no need for separate bios updates, patches etc.
It’s an idiot proof device with no management hassles and does it job.
Plus it looks the part with solid metal build. Definitely helps with WAF.
is it worth the additional price? that’s for each individual to decide.
I had HP G3 as HT PC
i5 7th Gen 8gb Ram and 250gb SSD.
Initially I ran Roon server on it on windows 10 , which was good enough. I formatted the SSD and installed ROCK ; as the HTPC specs confined to Roon recommendations.
Now that Change to ROCK reduced the background noise floor by a significant amount thereby improving the SQ in all aspects. I do recommend dedicated Roon server like nucleus or suitable Intel Nuc configured with ROCK if you want to experience the best SQ advantage. Apart from that it significantly improves the speed of the Roon interface like loading albums etc.
Just put Ubuntu or ESXi on it and you will be amazed to see what this tiny box is capable of doing.
Thank you for sharing this experience.
The last part for the ROCK Build came in yesterday. I'd gone through Roon's documentation and downloaded all the necessary software and single codec yesterday. I put the ROCK together today and installed the OS and set it up, all in about 15 minutes total. It was really that easy!
I must say it was well worth the expense! Network playback definitely sounds much better than connecting the PC/iPad via USB to the Streamer! Also the i5 NUC is plenty for my purposes. It sorted and indexed my offline library (only about 500GB) in about 10 minutes. The Roon Remote also plays and responds instantly. No lag, nothing.
I must say it was well worth the expense! Network playback definitely sounds much better than connecting the PC/iPad via USB to the Streamer! Also the i5 NUC is plenty for my purposes. It sorted and indexed my offline library (only about 500GB) in about 10 minutes. The Roon Remote also plays and responds instantly. No lag, nothing.
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ajaipuriyar
Active Member
Looks nice!!!
I too had nuc in my system but since fan noise bothered me, I replaced it with https://primebuy.com/product/adlink...2t0okFulRfYuPsbI72YyJVibA9ljw7SBoCjDUQAvD_BwE
Planning to dump my MAC mini as a Roon Core for a NUC or Nucleus. This will be purely used for as a Roon Core with excessive DSP usage and to play DSD256 files, throught a seperate Roon Endpoint.
Needed feedback on
1. How easy is it for a noob to manage with a NUC and Roon ROCK
2. Any difference in performance, SQ etc
Any suggestion would be helpful
Needed feedback on
1. How easy is it for a noob to manage with a NUC and Roon ROCK
2. Any difference in performance, SQ etc
Any suggestion would be helpful
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