Roon Nucleus

[AnotherJohnson]

If they bundled a Nucleus + with 4Tb and lifetime subscription, for $3500, that could be an attractive package. I’ll bet it would get great reviewer support.

[admin]

If they bundled a Nucleus + with 4Tb and lifetime subscription, for $3500, that could be an attractive package. I’ll bet it would get great reviewer support.

I would think they would want to limit the options for simplicity. Also storage can fail over time as they would most likely use HDD and not SSD for maximum storage and lower cost. Probably a lot more reliable without any moving parts. Also, subscriptions are tied to the user and not the hardware.

I also agree with you. Not sure I would want to devote myself to specific platform forever. Who knows what other options will be available in 5-10 years.

[AnotherJohnson]

They already sell the Nucleus + with 0, 2Tb or 4Tb.
The subscription would go with the account rather than the hardware, as is the case today.

How many can I put you down for?

[admin]

Oh I see. And they are using SSD. I guess I see how it could be appealing to have all this in one package. Of course it would probably be cheaper to just stick your own drive on the network. A 4 TB drive and a usb enclosure is certainly not going to cost $800... but that's the cheapskate in me talking.

[AnotherJohnson]

I just think that bundling makes it all seem like a better deal.

Since it’s all hypothetical, we’ll never know.

When I signed up for the free trial, I only signed for one month. I was leery of it.

Once I was interested in it, I was enticed by the free year to buy the Nucleus.

If they’d offered the bundle I proposed, I might have gone for the plus.

I am sold though. Roon is exceptional.

[admin]

Do you know if it's upgradable later on? Usually with these devices there is literally just an empty space where you can put in a drive.

[AnotherJohnson]

Yes. It comes with four screws which are somehow related to adding memory. I’ve not looked into how that works.

[AnotherJohnson]

In the “Roon Community” there are the usual frustrating arguments between those who hear differences between Ethernet cables and switches and those who know this to be impossible. Also power cord arguments.

I was on the side that calls it all BS until my system was good enough to show me that I was wrong.

[AnotherJohnson]

Here’s the path to adding internal storage

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/ ... al-storage

[AnotherJohnson]

Lots of people argue in favor of the Mac Mini over the Nucleus.
But the counter arguments are made as well.

You will never get IT guys to all agree… especially since the music goals and main systems are so diverse.

I’m really pleased with the plain old vanilla flavored nucleus and the iPad. The iPad was a big step up over the iPhone.

Lots of potential “cheapskate” issues are in play.

[admin]

Here’s the path to adding internal storage

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/ ... al-storage

Yeah, I would just add my own drive. Asking an extra $500 to remove 9 screws is pretty steep.

[AnotherJohnson]

On some level the Nucleus concept appeals first to those who would enjoy a turnkey solution. They don’t want to fool with modifications. They want to plug and play.

That’s why custom installers are a potential market. It’s supposedly a trouble free, self maintaining unit. Install it, put the app on the iPad for the customer, show them how intuitive it is, and collect your money.

I think the sound improvement is more nebulous. Its level of audibility is probably strongly system dependent. You will not convince many people who are IT focused that it’s a real issue. Whereas some segment of the audiophile group will be convinced that sound differences are a real phenomenon after they’ve done a comparison. Maybe some would prefer the Mac Mini (or some other) solution.

[AnotherJohnson]

Yeah, I would just add my own drive. Asking an extra $500 to remove 9 screws is pretty steep.

The price difference for the plus vs the regular is based on the processor. They will set up the regular Nucleus with 0, 2 or 4 Tb too.

The plus has a significantly more powerful cpu. And I think it’s capable of supporting more zones as well.

And the + also handles all types of DSD. Roon considers it an end game product … but as noted earlier IT moves quickly, so it’s hard to make predictions with certainty.

[admin]

The price difference I was quoting was for the no drive vs 4 TB difference of $800, but you can buy a 4TB SSD for $300, hence the $500 premium for the user to remove the 9 screws and plop in the drive.

Yeah, "end game" in the digital world means 3-5 years, if you are lucky. That doesn't mean that it becomes obsolete. Sometimes I miss my CJ D/A-2b DAC's sound. Yes, it only did 16b/44khz PCM input, but it actually sounded really nice with CD sources. Just that these things move quickly and as you have discovered, much of that innovation (for better or for worse) is really on the software side of things like interfaces, firmware, etc... and not just simply hardware. It's the software that I worry about. If Bluesound stopped working on their BluOS software, I pretty much guarantee that in 2 years half the streaming services that it currently supports would not be able to played. These devices are now subject to not open standards (like PCM, DSD, Flac) but the continually changing interfaces of content providers.

[audiobill]

Really nothing special about the Roon Nucleus; the "NUC" in Nucleus is merely referring to an Intel NUC kit, readily and cheaply available on Amazon.

What makes the difference is the version of Roon running on the Nucleus (Roon Rock) and the version running on Macs or Windows . It is implemented as an operating system in the Nucleus and NUC case, and as an application in the case of Mac or Windows. Thus, it is a simpler and maybe more trouble free use in the Nucleus as no use is made of OSX or windows operating systems on the Nucleus.

As to price, $1,500 is high for what is essentially an Intel i3 chip with 4gb of RAM computer compared to a much more powerful MacMin1 M2. And the Mac Mini has alternate future uses where the Nucleus is a single use computer.

Different horses.

[admin]

audiobill is right. At the end of the day, every streamer on the market is pretty much a small computer with off the shelf components. It's not like they are designing CPUs or RAM especially for streamers. What you are really paying for is a "plug and play" experience and future software support. Also some for the presentation (ie case and hardware interface). That doesn't mean it's not worth it. Matter of fact, the software support is the real payoff as it assures a hassle-free operation.

[AnotherJohnson]

The price difference I was quoting was for the no drive vs 4 TB difference of $800, but you can buy a 4TB SSD for $300, hence the $500 premium for the user to remove the 9 screws and plop in the drive.

Typical mark up. You can’t expect companies to add value without also adding profit.

At the same time “Isn’t it nice that they give cheapskates the option to add their own rather than force the convenience of preinstalled storage on them?”

Some one was recently railing against “the carriage trade” audiophiles who, because they may buy McIntosh, couldn’t possibly be legitimate audiophiles.

It seems like we sort ourselves into cheapskates and money wasters. The former see a $100 expense and view it as way too much. The latter see a better product for only $100 more. Both view the other side with suspicion at best, and in some extreme cases, contempt. We tend to connect which camp we’re in to our self perceived brilliance… it is part of the algorithm many use to rank themselves in the human pecking order. “Those other guys are really dumb. Look what they did! It’s not what I would have done.”

I think that most of the guys who would complain about the built in storage cost aren’t going to buy a Nucleus anyway because the whole premise is worth $600 in their value system, and it’s a big waste with no payoff.

I balked at adding on board storage too. Frankly, I can’t see a reason to have it resident in the Nucleus as long as it’s available on the network.

Roon or Qobuz don’t make you buy stuff that you add to your faux library. I find myself “collecting” albums there, mostly albums that are related to my hard media collection, but not duplicating it.

Which brings me to another “shortcoming” of Roon that may not be viewed as a shortcoming by lifelong streamers. It is this: Roon goes out and finds mostly public domain information about an album. This seems like a good substitution for album liner notes. At first I thought it would include liner notes, but it does not. Last night I noticed it when I was listening to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” I kept swiping through the series of support pages, but never saw the thoughts that Coltrane himself had penned to dedicate the work. At least in this case (in my opinion) this is a shortcoming that no one who hadn’t studied the vinyl releases would notice. Their understanding of Coltrane would be less complete without reading his personal thoughts.

Of course without Roon or liner notes, the listener misses even more.

[AnotherJohnson]

What you are really paying for is a "plug and play" experience and future software support. Also some for the presentation (ie case and hardware interface). That doesn't mean it's not worth it. Matter of fact, the software support is the real payoff as it assures a hassle-free operation.

If you dig into Roon’s self descriptions, you note that they made an early decision to fund their activities by subscriptions rather than by hardware sales.

They seem to be somewhat unique. Many people are put off by the fact that you have to have two subscriptions to effectively use Roon. Roon’s and Qobuz or Tidal (or whatever). People don’t “get” that the Roon subscription is to make using the other subscription easier to use and more enjoyable. Seems like Roon is an unnecessary luxury. Why not just use BluOS or HEOS or Mosaic or whatever and get extra info directly from Wikipedia? That’s a perfectly defendable approach.

It goes with the whole idea that the Roon experience is overpriced.

[audiobill]

I really like the Roon integration of Qobuz, Tidal and my collection into an endless stream of music to my taste. Will be interesting to watch what Tidal does now that MQA is bankrupt.....

[admin]

I really like the Roon integration of Qobuz, Tidal and my collection into an endless stream of music to my taste. Will be interesting to watch what Tidal does now that MQA is bankrupt.....

They're adopting FLAC. It's already been announced by the CEO. Whether MQA will be dropped or maintained is anybody's guess.