Thanks @Torq I’ll keep tweaking the settings and the detective work.
Hmmm. I seee that apart from the DAC my system would need some upgrading before it can meet Roon’s specs. I require more SSD’s to store music for its “core” system as obviously it considers outboard USB drives as sub-par, and I’d need to move my “noisy” main computer to a closet, which is not practical atm considering the cost of longer decent audio-grade USB and Ethernet cables, we’re talking like $200 a pop for two-meter lengths, would have to add that to the cost of the DAC if I am to walk the Roon path. It is otherwise reasonably priced but gear requirements are a lot of dough to absorb in one shot.
Right now I have Reference 4 system-wide installed (alternating with SoundID) DSP so I’m using the Elear since the Elegia is not yet supported by Sonarworks (neither is the Stellia but it doesn’t need it). My initial intent was to replicate Oratory !990’s EQ profile (which Sonarworks does quite well on the Elear) but since the Elegia is not supported I thought of using APO which may look crude but is a fully-fledged parametric EQ with the caveat of a steep-ish learning curve but no more difficult than, say, mastering Foobar 2000. I know how to set APO with or without Peace but it’s a workload I was hoping to pass on to Roon but it doesn’t look like it’s going to go as planned. APO road I guess, the crude graphic EQ in Foobar is not going to cut it and besides that Foobar has too many DSP settings to choose from including many deprecated. Instead of streaming I’ll use downloaded FLAC’s stored on USB drives and just play them through Foobar in exclusive WASAPI mode but I have no idea if APO output will remain bit-perfect or if that’s even possible. Probably not but that DAC won’t mind and it matters little in a basic correction test.
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Roon works perfectly well with external USB storage.
There is no requirement (nor meaningful benefit) for it to be SSD (internal or external), either.
SSD will be a bit faster if you have a huge library that you have a completely random access pattern too, since the cache doesn’t get used efficiently, but that affects nothing more than how fast a song plays initially and has no effect on any other aspect of performance. SSD will also index faster, but that’s incremental after initial setup and isn’t a long process anyway.
You can literally run Roon on a single computer if you want to, using as much external USB or NAS storage as you need, and be good to go. There are benefits to separating clients and core, but they absolutely can be the same machine, and the hardware requirements of that are very modest.
The only time you need more powerful hardware is if you’re using a dedicated core machine WHILE, engaging lots of Roon’s DSP functions, while ALSO feeding multiple clients/end-points simultaneously.
A 2012 MacMini with 16GB of RAM and a 2.5GHz dual-core i5 CPU is enough to support several active end-points with several DSP features engaged, with no issues at all.
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This!
Very well said. Also no need for a 200 dollar ethernet cable… I mean is up to you but to me is one of those upgrade that can be sketchy 
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That’s what I keep telling myself every time I let my brother-in-law stea… err. sell me such accessories but his store is one one of those high-end places where that is entry-level ware. Unfortunately there are no electronics shops near his suburban location and I don’t have a car anymore (sold it to buy Susvara and Utopia) which was not a big deal since I live in a very large city that has all forms of transit systems from subways to buses to suburban trains and of course, cabs. So instead of taking the time, trouble and expense of traveling miles away to cheaper stores I give up and buy the damn cables. After all, they are very decent.
The USB cable I care more for though, as do DAC manufacturers. Most don’t provide one and they always suggest “audio-grade, high-speed USB” but they also often caution about lengths in excess of one meter which is another reason why I think the specs suggested by Roon on their website may be a tad bit extreme and lean towards ultraphile attitude. I can’t believe most Roon users have their computers 12 feet away to avoid cpu fan “noise” (what noise, I can’t hear mine). PSU noise I can understand but most people with desktop audio setups know better than to procure 500w buzzer PSU’s. The larger the quieter, usually. I can’t hear mine even if I concentrate on it. Just like the CPU It has a large, low-rpm fan. As long as I keep the on-board DAC off in BIOS I doubt this would interfere with Roon. Hard drives are another matter.
Non-SSD’s are noisy and they vibrate, I agree with Roon that SSD’s are a must for the so-called “core” at least until the cloud is able to handle the bandwidth load.
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I don’t think you’re getting the typical Roon use-case.
The whole point of having separate “core” and clients/end-points, is so that you can put the core somewhere other than where you are listening. That’s how most users run it.
Notwithstanding that there’s no need to have fans in a dedicated core in the first place unless you’re running a pathological number of end-points with extensive DSP active for all of them.
You don’t need a PC as a client/end-point at all.
Roon’s core product, “Nucleus” uses SSDs for a combination of form-factor and lack of need for a fan in the machine. That’s all.
Neither matters if you’re using the core/client model as intended, you just put the core in another room. End-points (be it a $35 Raspberry Pi or something more exotic) are invariable fan-less. And if you’re otherwise feeding your DAC off your PC, then Roon doesn’t change the requirements to do so.
I’m not sure what the “cloud” handling “bandwidth load” has to do with any of this. There’s no cloud involvement in anything “Roon” unless you’re streaming from TIDAL or Qobuz. And if you’re doing that, the hard-drives aren’t involved anyway.
I’ve got a bunch of Roon end-points, and a fan-less core. I run all manner of content off a library that spans multiple NAS units. That feeds multiple endpoints, most of which are using some level of DSP (some more than others). That all runs perfectly happily over standard 802.11AC wireless.
Roon isn’t cheap … but most of the arguments I see against it as just based on failing to understand how it works and how it is best employed.
And If you’re running a DAC/listening station off a machine running SonarWorks in SystemWide mode, you’re all local anyway in terms of how you’re talking to your playing your music files and getting them to your DAC. Roon requires NO change to that. You could literally run it on the same machine with no need for ANY changes and no additional hardware required.
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Good, once again your advice is far more reasonable than the service provider’s. I have an 9th generation i7 PC from last year with 32MB as a main computer and a secondary 8th generation more modest i3 with 8MB. Both have identical 900w Quiet TT PSU’s and tower-type CPU coolers with quiet fans. I use them both for audio but obviously Roon would do better with the i7, which serves many purposes besides audio and is not networked with the i3 like it used to which was a PITA more than anything else. For the moment the i3 is the main audio rig since apart from Sonarworks stuff I don’t use much DSP and the CPU rarely rises above 40% capacity. That one only has SSD’s in it, three 1TB SATA’s, 1 256Mb SATA and one 256MB M.2X4 PCIe to house Win 10. The i7 has 1TB SATA SSD and 2 1TB traditional SATA drives. Thus equipped it is slower than the i3 except on CPU/RAM-intensive apps or games.
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Don’t ask me, it says something to that affect on Roon’s website.
Ian, I was only getting what is available from the main Roon website where it says (quoting verbatim from the How Roon Works section):
Buy that noisy i7, tuck it in a closet far away from the listening area, provide it with power and network connectivity, and forget about it. While the centralized Core does the heavy lifting, audio devices can be simpler, lighter-weight, more reliable, and less electrically noisy.
Since you weren’t around this morning I had nowhere else to turn to for info. Of course elsewhere on that huge site it may say otherwise but I didn’t feel like spending 90 minutes sifting through all the material. That being said your input is very much appreciated and entices me to look into this much further.
It’s probably best to phrase statements about how something works in a non-authoritative/declarative manner, then.
Where it’s a subjective thing, it’s a different matter.
But when you’re either a) not directly quoting something or b) you don’t actually know how it works (from use in practice), best to provide links, or qualify the statements so as not to give the wrong impression.
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Advice duly taken. I am not always aware of how I may come across… until I read my own material later and only then do I take notice that either I was overly pedantic, or authoritative, or too lazy to provide links (like I should have regarding this cloud bandwidth affair, which is on the Roon website). But by then I often feel it is too late to edit the post(s) 
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Roon does nothing with cloud, Thats a misconception… Roon does have a DB system that grabs metadata for albums, radio, AI, etc… from the net. They call it Valence, and the only thing cloud there is the DB, Yes, the first local IO spin is going to be a bit intensive if your collection is gargantuan, after that is very low level… As far as bandwidth goes. Roon will work with what ever speed you have…
I am not going to echo @Torq as he has everything pretty much on-point.
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Ian was right, I should have provided the link to this cloud thing when I first mentioned it. What Roon actually says about is that cloud technology is not advanced enough yet to be of any use to them yet and yes, bandwidth is a consideration. Without further ado this is Roon’s take on the matter, lifted off their expansive website:
## Why not just put the Core in the Cloud?
The cloud just isn’t there yet!
It’s getting closer with every year, and we fully expect the balance to tip at some point. Roon is prepared to evolve accordingly when that happens, but we also need to make products that work today.
Today, high-resolution music is still too bandwidth-intensive for many internet connections, and the costs associated with storing a large lossless or high-resolution music library in the cloud are arduous.
Source: Roon About The Cloud (from Roon’s website; subsection: How Roon Works)
I hope this quote clarifies the matter. Inquisitive minds can click the link above for further investigation.
Sorry, But I disagree, Roon has 0 dependencies on your bandwidth pipeline, Your quote talks about the future and why not “today”.
TBH Roon has not done something like this as they are catering (to an extend) to the streaming companies which brings them a consistent monthly revenue…
Today, you can create your “own cloud” solution with roon if you or anybody cares to chose so.
The how is a whole different thread 
There is many threads that talk about this same topic up in the Roon forums… This is not early 2k. Fast internet is vastly available… Latency is a whole different conversation but the base is there 
Edit: I also want to address the requirements that roon labs put out there. Like anything, Is all about the experience, Roon tends to think ahead and assume one content library for all, hence their requirements are a bit extended for use. They want you to have the best experience possible hence their tested recommendations. Also they are big against wifi because is so unreliable BUT… Works just fine, the kicker is how you implement your wifi and your lan and how you/one did/does your/their (ROFL) implementation.
BUT 90% of the time wifi yields a bad experience hence why you wont catch roon saying… GO FOR IT! IS AWESOME!
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Got to agree with @DEXCOM7 on this one. That quote and attitude seems very dated.
Someone should tell Netflix, Google, and Amazon that their legions of cloud servers don’t exist and that streaming HD music let alone 4K video isn’t possible… Per my recent Tidal vs. Qobuz vs. Amazon HD Music testing, I think they might all be using Amazon servers and the same bloody master files with slightly different post-processing or filtering.
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I run ROON on a 2014 Mac Mini with 8GB RAM and a standard Mac HD. It is pretty quiet - the aquarium in the next room makes more noise, and the aquarium is NOT noisy. I do keep some storage on a USB LaCie drive, but most of the library is on the internal. Have not had any issues.
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English allows for the use of “is” when talking about the future, depending on context. You’re not gonna make me split hairs now are ya
Your cloud, my cloud, their cloud, corporate cloud. There is no cloud, just networked networks with room to spare for everyone… at a cost for intensive use . It appears to me that what Roon is saying is that the server topology of the “cloud” doesn’t have the throughput capacity they require and/or it comes at a cost that cuts deeper into profit than having subscribers pay for individual cores. I honestly don’t think they meant people can’t use the cloud for Roon-related purposes. Maybe they were referring to a future cloud-based mother-of-cores, maybe not, it’s not clear. What is clear from their statement is that they intend to make some use of the cloud in the future. For what and when? I don’t know, they won’t say. I agree with it’s about the winds of profitability: where they lead we follow… unless we’re quarantined 
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Bingo! We have a winner. This has all the earmarks of defending old technology as long as possible (aka landline phones, network TV, subscription cell phone plans, etc., etc.)
Roon is a luxury product aimed at midde-to-upper class niche buyers. They can certainly afford either their own cores or cloud services.
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Ahem! I didn’t write the material, Roon did. And since they haven’t edited their statements it may still apply from their perspective. But this is pure conjecture, only Roon could settle the matter. 
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Yes, I understood that and meant no offense. I agreed with @DEXCOM7’s critique of the quote. That’s why I left your text in italics. 
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