Best Server To Run Roon Core

@jmarshak : congratulations on the Roon lifetime membership purchase. It is the best purchase I have ever made in audio back in March 2017

Apart for speed and “bandwidth”, the other benefit of your fanless NUC is a dedicated machine that runs headless 24/7 with no interruptions.

 

From my experience, since your Roon Core is not directly linked to DAC (I.e via USB cable), the LPS will not bring much to the table. That’s just my experience with a NUC first then Nucleus+. Some other people experienced an improvement. So you can definitely try for yourself.

@jmarshak : what is your DAC? 

Consensus from above however, seems to be to keep the server and renderer separate, so thinking for server -to set up a NUC, powered by an external LPS (I might actually have a matching Paul Hynes for this) - total cost for the server with LPS is about $1500. - A separate NUC / PH LPS for rendering would run another $1500 -> for a total of $3500 with cables.

You don’t need 2 NUCs all you need is an endpoint which could be anything from a raspberry pi4 to any Roon ready streamer. The NUC runs the core and could be attached to a DAC if wanted but most use some sort of endpoint or roon bridge.

I agree with Dow Jones here. You don't need another computer to be used as a renderer (or endpoint, what Roon calls it). Depending on what your DAC is, you could use any Roon Ready endpoint. Good value for the money are the Sonore various endpoints (microRendu, ultraRendu, etc.)

@jmarshak  --- your Esoteric K-01 is a SACD/CD player but it is also a USB & S/PDIF DAC. You can get a Roon Ready streamer that has USB out to your K-01. That streamer can be anything (depending on how much money you want to spend), including something like what I mentioned earlier, Sonore microRendu or ultraRendu. Then you Server (Roon Core on roon's lingo) will stay in a different machine, such as NUC, Nucleus.

That's the two-piece solution Roon often recommends. But only because people tend to use noisy general purpose computers as both Core and Endpoint, which degrades the sound. If you do use a great one-piece solution, optimized for audio, such as the Wolf or Innuos mentioned above, you certainly can, it's definitely a (good) option.

@decathlon -- 

I have a question. I’m using the Cary Audio DMS600 Streamer/DAC with a Roon Nucleus and a Audioquest Vodka Ethernet Cable. Is there any additional devices that will improve the sound even more like an OpticalRendu, UltraRendu or an EtherREGEN? Any other option available? I am thinking about the Cary Audio DMS700.

The Cary DMSs have a nice network bridge (renderer / endpoint) built in. If you want to improve something, then upgrade to the DMS-700. There is thread in here about a few people upgrading to the 700 and being very happy.

Later on, if so inclined, you can try an EtherREGEN or some other type of Ethernet switch or filter.

If you have a streamer and a server (two separate units): put the first good Ethernet Switch or Filter in front of the streamer. If you have two of these Switches or Filters.... well, you know what to do.