Roon Nucleus as a Streamer

Last month I bought an inexpensive Intel Nuc to use as a Roon core.

If house layout was different, I would have used my MacBook.

If you already own a general purpose computer that you could use for Roon, you might want to try that first before buying a dedicated server or streamer.  This will give you a change to familiarize yourself with Roon before making any upgrade decisions.

What is behind recommendations to use a Nucleus only as a server, not with a direct connection?  A couple of possibilities:

First, some users like to locate the music server separately from the endpoint(s).  This may be a bias held over from the days when computing devices tended to have noisy fans.  I have both a Mac Mini and a sonicTransporter music server in the same cabinet with my preamp and power amp.  I don't notice any fan noise.  Nor does electrical noise seem to be a problem, as far as I can tell. 

Second, some users don't like USB connections for music.  I've had problems with USB in the past, but this had to do with maintaining the handshake between certain devices, not with sound quality. 

The main reason I don't use a direct USB connection from the sonicTransporter is because I allocate the one USB-B port on my streamer/preamp/DAC to the Mac Mini, which hosts digital signal processing applications (BACCH4Mac and HQPlayer) as well as music-management applications.  So I only use ethernet to connect the music server to the streamer/preamp/DAC.  

Personally, I think the Nucleus is a little overpriced and under-powered. For some people it's a good choice, but I decided the sonicTransporter was just about as simple, a bit cheaper, more powerful, and well supported.  Many people consider an inexpensive NUC even more cost-effective.  But it can depend on what you want to run and what configurations you prefer, which you may not know yet.

One set up I sometimes use, which works well, is to  run HQ Player on the sonicTransporter and feed that directly to the streamer/preamp/DAC via a direct USB connection. I go back and forth between preferring that vs. running BAACH4Mac on the Mac Mini.

Excellent feedback & advice, thanks very much to all of you!

I wish only to be digital but I think I have to try and figure out if I even need Roon. Yes, I have used it in the past, and yes, it's a nice feature, but it adds lots of additional costs just to listen to a few songs on Tidal or Qobuz. 

Maybe just a good DAC, a decent server that is Roon Ready, the I could always sign up for Roon down the road.

+1 @big_greg

I have a Roon Nucleus+ with 2TB internal drive and 3TB ext drive connected directly to it.

The Nucleus+ is connected directly via USB to a Bryston BDA-3 DAC. Simple and clean and to my ears sounds great. Have a few TB of DSD on the ext drive which is really exceptional.  OP,  As in all cases it may not fit your ideas or your system plans.

Regards,

barts

Roon is completely unnecessary if one just wants to listen to a few songs on Tidal or Qobuz. Roon has four main advantages. 1 it is a fabulous source of information on music and on the relationships between different musician and their recorded output. 2 - its user interface is superb. 3. Its capacity to integrate stored and streamed music. Lastly, it frees one from reliance on the streamer manufacturer's proprietary interface. Ok, so one is reliant on Roon being around long term (so there is a vulnerability there), but it means one is free to change dac/streamer while one's user interface remains constant.

As an observation on the Nucleus / +, it's way overpriced for what it offers. for the price of a Nucleus plus in particular, one can build a top notch ultra quiet Windows computer with more onboard SDD storage and a quality USB card like a JCAT that will deliver superb streaming quality and have the flexibility/upgradability that is missing from the Nucleus.