Best Server To Run Roon Core

@jmarshak

I think you could be disappointed going from an Aurender N10 with the Conductor app to a Roon-based system.

I have an Innuos Zenith Mk. 3, upon which I was running Roon Core. At the suggestion of another member, I tried Squeezebox using Ipeng as a remote. The sound was significantly better; the music was clearer, the background was quieter and there was greater dimension.

The results were pretty shocking and somewhat disappointing because I really love the Roon UI and the Ipeng UI is nowhere near as easy to use or full featured.

I’d be curious to hear if other folks have had a similar experience.

When I had my Zenith Mk3 and before the most recent Roon updates I was running my Zenith in Roon plus Squeezlite (experimental) and I agree Squeezlite and Squeezebox sounded really good. Maybe better than Roon. But I didn’t have to use iPeng thank goodness. I don’t think iPeng is very user friendly. But things went haywire with the Roon updates. I had to switch to plain Roon core, which was much better. But I sense that the Innuos strained with upsampling and DSD. So I sold the Zenith. I am going to experiment on the low cost end with an Azulle mini PC which will cost me $613.47 to build. If that doesn’t go well I plan to get an SGC SonicTransporter i5. 

@kingbarbudaI 

My Zenith replaced a SonicTransporter i5, SGC LPS and Synology NAS.

In my humble opinion, the Zenith is audibly better. In all fairness, the SGC ran the Roon DSP features without issue. 

The other thing to note is that the SGC i5 is not a streamer, just a Roon Core server whereas the Zenith can act as either or both.

Spend your money on your DACs - not your Roon core.   Roon core can run on simple PC.    I run mine on a repurposed Dell Win10 with 16GB of memory.    The library is on a NAS outside the box.    The Roon core PC runs 'headless' and occasionally I access it using VNC from another PC.

I recently went with a fanless, noiseless Small Green Computer sonicTransporter and an opticalRendu with Roon and couldn't be happier.  It plays MQA, 32 / 768 PCM, and up to DSD 512.  And, of course, Roon with it's new 1.8 rollout is great to work with.