Brain Farts w/ Roon Nucleus

Nice!  $30 solutions are the best kind and don’t happen often in these parts. 

I run Roon Core/server on a modest Beelink Gemini j45 mini PC currently, DSP in play all the time, and with very good results.  It’s about 6 years old though and modest powered.  Will likely upgrade to a newer model with more Mac Mini like specs.  Prefer not to change OS because I run other software there as well when needed like dbpoweramp (ripping), audacity (digital mastering), Picard (auto tagging), others.

@sns providing an example of a well behaved Roon setup that is affordable is very valuable info. Thanks.  Also consistent with what I have read about Mac mini being a good choice for running Roon core/server.  Mac mini will be a step up from my current mini pc but guess what, even the mini PC fits the bill fairly well ( even with maxing out the CPU to some extent) so I am not in a rush.  

@pvnasby for sure for most everyone I know would feel similar. 

But since when did technical  challenges stop audiophiles in their pursuit of excellence?   We are too awesome for that, right?  Tweaking is our middle name!  Roon is just another thing to tweak as needed.

Or not.  To each their own.  Many ways to skin a cat.  Roon is awesome and worth the effort IMHO.  You will learn a lot along the way.  I know I have and am a better audiophile now for doing it. 

Cheers!

The fact that Roon runs on so many devices both commercial and specialized for audio enthusiasts is perhaps its greatest feature as well as one of its biggest burdens because clearly performance can vary widely depending on what devices are used and there are so many to choose from at all price points.

In my case, with the devices I use, things work very well for the amount of money I have invested.  

Caveats;

1) if vendor support is a key issue for you there may be better options out there.

2)  Given teh range of possible devices used, performance will vary widely.   In general, as with most any computer hardware, you should get what you are willing to pay for.

3) Roon could do a much better job providing more clarity on what to expect with various commonly used devices.  It would probably require a bigger investment by Harmon to be able to provide that information reliably but I think that would help elimiate a lot of angst with users who can only find out for sure via trial and error themselves.  More technically savvy users will be better equipped to navigate the journey effectively than many.

One final note, as with any computer application,  when things head south,  a reboot may be needed to clear things up.   With Roon that mean a reboot of Roon endpoint devices as well as the device the Core/server runs on. Sometimes router and any other devices involved with internet access.

If you have not rebooted all those together ever or for a long time, worth a shot to see if it helps.  A lot of physical devices and services are involved with any network application especially when internet connections and performance of remote services at the other end that users have no control over (Like Qobuz, etc.) come into play.  THings only perform as well as the weakest link in teh chain at any particular moment.

Roon is an awesome app with many unique and valuable features, but those with low tolerance for technical complexity are probably better served using other vendor specific streaming solutions.

If only one could have it all and it always worked perfectly and didn’t cost very much as well.  A perfect world would be very nice indeed!

I have been a senior technical engineer/architect for a major financial services provider for many years.  I also have a technical background in digital signal processing.  So ai am used to this kind of thing and eat it up.  Maybe when I retire sometime soon I will offer up my services to Harmon to see if I might be able to help take Roon to another level.  That would be a fun thing for me to do in retirement but on a very limited part time basis only.  Who know.  Lots of fun things to do in retirement including all the usual audiophile trappings.  

Cheers!

Worth noting that I use DSP heavily all the time and my modest older minipc I run teh core/server on still does quite well, however fact is it does peg the CPU frequently which clearly indicates more CPU will only help.   From what I read I will likely upgrade to newer Mac mini at some point as a cost effective solution that should be up to the task fully.

Well to confuse things even further I've found Roon has improved quite a bit overall since teh Harmon purchase.

Beefier hardware with more/faster CPU and memory  is key for sure.  When I upgrade it will most likely be to a Mac mini.  But no rush...it works just fine for me now though I understand where it could be overwhelming for less technical people.  I do this stuff for a living so I am used to it but have no doubt its totally overwhelming for many.   Really good things are seldom also really easy.  There are other less complicated options out there if needed.  Different strokes.

A few tidbits to offer.  
 

1) throttling the background processing as suggested helps reserve processing power for other tasks so that is a good idea. 
 

2) sometimes the Roon endpoint not Roon itself can become the bottleneck, for example when many tracks are in the queue.  Displaying the queue contents can lock up the Roon controller for a time while displaying initially.  
Also my Cambridge Audio streamers sometimes take a long time to start playing a track with many tracks in the Roon device’s queue.  A restart of the streamer device usually clears that.  I often queue up thousands of tracks randomly so I do ask a lot of Roon and my streamers  there. 
 

Yes Roon isn’t perfect but I find the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. 
 

Roon can be very CPU intensive.  I run it on a very modest powered device that works well but often bottlenecks on CPU.  Will likely move to a faster device with more CPU horsepower at some point.  
 

Next time Roon hangs up,  check the system resource monitor on your OS to see where the bottleneck is.  Most likely CPU and maybe network bandwidth in some cases with Roon core/server from what I have seen personally.

With windows deactivating unneeded os services can go a long way.  
 

Also avoid running other cpu intensive programs on your Roon server.  For example Google Chrome and other browsers can be a resource hog as well especially if one allows many cookies to collect and suck up cpu resources.