Anyone have a Roon Nucleus One? Your experience positive or negative?


I know there are discussions about the Roon Nucleus but I have been wondering about the newer affordable Nucleus One. Does anyone out there in audio world have one? Would you buy it again? Positive or negative points?

2psyop

Showing 2 responses by docknow

@2psyop 

To your original question: I have had both a Nucleus Rev A and now a Nucleus One.  I purchased the Rev A in 2018 and was amazed at the sonic improvement over running Roon on a MBP I was using at the time (see other AG posts of mine for more details).  In 2024, it become flaky, shutting off by itself, not booting up unless it sat for a couple of days.  I took it apart and eventually installed a new CMOS battery, but that did solve the problem.  Roon thought it might need a new motherboard, weren’t even sure they had anymore, and replacing it would cost a couple hundred more dollars than a new Nucleus One . So I waited and bought a Nucleus One.  

 

In the meantime, my big system had been down due to needing new tubes for the ARC REF150SE, so I have not directly compared the sound of the two, but functionally the One is identical to the Rev A.  I laugh when I see Rev A, and Rev B’s priced more used, than a One, with a warranty, is new.  I would only buy a One at this point.  One trade-off the Rev’s have nice metal cases and the One’s case is plastic.  But it does not get hot.

-docknow

@2psyop Sounds like you have two options

1. You can remove the Rose and connect the Nucleus directly to your DAC.  This might sound better, it could also sound worse, if it is "cleaning" up the bitstream somehow.  You could sell teh Rose and re-invest those $ into something else.  I like the Network Acoustics filters. 

2. You can take out the Nucleus and put it anywhere on the network and push/pull the bits to the Rose (I think).

-docknow