Best Server To Run Roon Core

One major point i want to emphasize.

Everyone focuses on the DAC but most DAC's are pretty darn good.  The weakest link is often the music server.  I have a several thousand dollar mac mini I thought was just fine but it was destroyed hands down by the pi-HAT described above.

So the music server is very important.  

The music server does NOT have to be expensive.  I would be interested to see if others have observed the same as I did.

Get a roon endpoint.  Raspberry pi is your starting point but with a small upgrade to include a well designed HAT (hardware attached on top) you are one step from unbelievable sound at a great price.

For me, the PI2AES was the way to go and beat my mac mini hands down.

https://www.pi2design.com/pi2aes.html

The PI2AES (the so-called pi-HAT) is the roon endpoint.  You can't install roon directly on a raspberry so instead you install an operating system that functions as an endpoint.  I used RoPIeee|XL which is pretty straightforward if you know anything about unix:

https://codexwilkes.com/downloads/ropieee-guide-for-beginners.pdf

The difference between this and running on my mac mini was like night and day.  I would say this was the biggest bang for the buck I have yet experienced on my system.  

I run this into an ADI-2-DAC FS and it sounds amazing.  Here's a great  article that does a showdown using the PI2AES:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/streamer-ddc-showdown-pi2aes-vs-sotm-sms200-ultra-neo.939706/