Appropriate Apple table for Roon

I am very pleased with the Roon Nucleus+. It allows you to rip every CD and other digital files to its HD, plus stream high res audio. I operate it from my iPhone. From my experience the investment in nucleus is far superior to running the Roon software on a computer. But it is an investment. Another plus, the Roon Arc software allows user to access their Roon library from anywhere with an internet connection. I literally accessed mine today during a 4 hour drive. It’s awesome. 

I started by just running Roon off of my iPhone with the camera adapter.

The iPad is just the interface. You could pretty much use anything but a phone is going to be more one-handed and convenient. The newer the better and that is just for efficiency, but you must have a Core device in your home in order to use Roon. A Core device is a computer, Mac, Windows that is stable and always on. So, you may think a laptop but as soon as you close the lid it will turn off. Sure, you could go into settings and have it not go to sleep when you close the lid... but just don't. I mean if this is your only option, sure, but I recommend you either buy a Roon Nucleus to give you the best experience or load Roon Rock on a dedicated Intel NUC. https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/roon-optimized-core-kit

Roon is pretty easy to set up. You can use an iPad or an iPhone or even a Mac as the users device to play music. You will need a computer to run Roon core, an old Mac mini with a ssd drive and 16G of ram will work. A $200 raspberry pi will also work.

You can use a network dac, or an Apple TV device as Roon endpoints

+1@larryincmh Windows machine runs the core. Streaming Tidal and my CDs ripped into iTunes using ALAC. Found out Roon sees Airplay devices and can read iTunes repository. Bought an old first generation Airplay device off eBay for $30, added it to my eero network, downloaded the core and was good to go. I thought I’d just do this quickly to see if I liked Roon. But it sounds very good, so I’m still using this configuration. 
 

Am using an iPad or iPhone or old MacBook Air for the client. They just control the core, which is what’s delivering the music. 
 

Gotta admit that even with a tech background, I was lost reading Roon’s online “help” about getting started. Nucleus and Bridges and Networks and Streamers. Oh my! Happy to find out about Roon, Airplay, and iTunes.