Roon Nucleus as a Streamer

Don’t waste your money on Nucleus or Nucleus plus. Instead, use your existing laptop to run Roon Core and buy a decent dedicated streamer with Roon ready (endpoint). For Roon server duties, there are so many inexpensive options that are better than Nucleus.

It all depends on your needs. For me, getting a Nucleus was an "easy" button that fit my system needs.

I bought a nice DAC and wanted to use it in my main system. I had also been considering moving to Roon. I found a used Nucleus at a very good price. It allowed me to use the DAC in my main system without adding another streaming device, and allowed me to use that DAC with Roon. The DAC isn’t "Roon Ready", but connecting it directly to the Nucleus made that a non-issue.

Using the Nucleus allowed me to copy my digitial files over to its hard drive and send them directly to the DAC instead of over my network and kept the Roon Core off my already somewhat bogged down computer.

It was the perfect solution for my needs. It might not be for yours.

I found the Nucleus+ to be a step up from the dedicated tower I had running Roon sending a signal via USB.  That said, I found the Nucleus got better when it ran as a server only.  

I think that is the important point here.  It is not bad as a server and player, it is better as a server alone.  This is the case even with much more expensive devices. 

The reason is that roon servers work best when very high powered as they are dealing with Roon DSPs and a very volatile internet along with other accessing flies etc....  Players, are best when mid-powered.  Excess processing power tends to introduce noise in this stage.  

I decided against the Nucleus, because it’s not easy getting human support. I got a Small Green Computer Sonictransporter Roon server instead, and it’s been excellent (and Andrew has offered excellent tech support when needed). I paired mine with a MicroRendu streamer into my DAC. Not sure they sell the Micro, and maybe only the UltraRendu now.

SGC Roon server

SGC Sonictransporter Server + Rendu and power supply

Looks like the MicroRendu is discontinued
Sonore

 I have a Roon Nucleus and have utilized it as a server/streamer. In my opinion, it was decent, very enjoyable, but not great.  Together with an Sbooster LPS in place of the stock power supply and a decent USB cable (in my case Curious), I thought it was somewhat better (say a smidge better) than a Node 2i hooked up via coax to the same Chord Qutest DAC.  Then in March of this year put a Bricasti M5 in play as my network player and Roon enpoint via Coax to the Qutest, and this took things to a whole other level.