Roon Nucleus

Personally I don't get this product at all. It is not that we don't love Roon we love Roon, the issue is the high price for what seems to be very ordindary hardware.

A high quality server absolutely sounds better, we have been doing digital transport comparisons for years.

The first time we compared an Aurender to a modified Mac mini there was no doubt that a dedicated server outperforms even a modded computer, let alone a stock computer,  but that is the rub with the Roon Nuclues products they don't seem to be particularly well built or designed to maximize the sound quality of the data stream. 

We sell many different servers, we sell the Baetis, the Naim Core, the Aurender products, the Lumin products, the NAD servers, and lastly the Innous servers.

The Innous offers a custom motherboard, custom OS, a specialy designed digital output board, and massive power supply upgrades especially the Zennith model which weights about 25lbs!

When you compare that to the Roon Nucleus it doesn't appear that Roon is really engineering a solution to how best to run there software other than perhaps a Linux core designed to maximize the playback of the Roon software.

So my question is why would anyone buy this thing?

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ  

It is reviewed in the current issue of Stereophile which went live recently. Mentioning in case those interested want to know more.

Just saw the May 2018 issue of hi fi + featuring a review of the Nucleus by Chris Matthews.
”I had been running the Roon software...for over a year now and one of the issues has been that running it requires a decent amount of processing power.  A tablet won’t do it, so I have been using a MacBook.  It works well enough but that essentially means that the computer is out of bounds while the music is playing.  What has been needed is a separate and dedicated computer for running the Roon Core, linked to the network to assemble and collate the metadata as well as providing an extensive view of the library through your tablet.  Utilizing the Mac also led to some occasionally clunky and irritating reboot moments...”

Pretty much confirms what I thought.  Roon almost fried my computer and ran quite poorly.  Matthews then goes on to extol the virtues of the Nucleus +.  Regrettably, he doesn’t compare the sound of Roon from his Mac vs the Nucleus +

I never tried running Roon on my MacBook Air. I have a Sonic Transporter connected to my network that runs Roon Core. I just use the Roon App on an iPad Mini to access music on my NAS running Minim Server and stream through the Auralic Aries to my Lessloss DAC. Once I abandoned Roon I went back to using the Lightning DS app to access music on my NAS (still running Minim Server).

Per Steve Nugent's recommendation I just set up Kinsky with BubbleUPnP as a proxy to Minim Server. I can't say I notice anything different sound wise. Although the Kinsky interface is nice, Bubble UPnP does not run on my NAS like Minim Server does. I had to set it up on my Mac Mini which means I have to leave it on all the time so Bubble UPnP doesn't shut down. If I decide to stick with Kinsky, and I might as I'm contemplating replacing the Aries, I may drop Bubble UPnP from the equation.