Roon Discussion

even though the Synology DS220+ is below the recommended hardware, it works like a charm. Thank you everyone for breaking thru my thick skull on how this works. Aside from a single memory stick, no additional hardware or software required and easy transition between locations.

 

Yeah that's not really surprising.

Roon is not especially taxing on the CPU for simple playback, any basic x86 atom will do it while using single-digit CPU % per playback stream, it's things like playback DSP, DSD conversion, and track analysis on import (for replaygain/dynamic range/waveform) that hammer the CPU.

 

I have had success connecting to my Roon server directly using Zero Tier as a simple VPN. Depending on your internet connection - remotely it does a great job. For Roon ARC, I typically connect my mobile devices directly over cellular or Wifi. If there are issues I will using my Private Internet Access VPN which happens to have a server very close to my home.

My wish for ARC would be a similar interface to the Roon mobile app and the ability to use DSP profiles.

To respond to some other recent comments regarding Roon Server hardware, mine isn't anything special but it works. I am using an older quad core i3 Mac mini with 8gb ram and a small internal SSD. I have this connected to several external drives via a 5 bay USB-C case from Amazon:
-1: 16GB - backup
- 2 & 3: 2x8 GB in RAID 0 that houses the main music library (transferring to/from is much faster with the raid array)
- 2TB Time Machine Drive
- 2TB scratch/Torrent drive - older drive for temp files and my drive to handle my private torrent participation for international cycling races.

The Mac Mini can handle Roon DSP for various headphones while also upsampling and converting to DSD 512, although I have moved to running at native sampling rates these days.

You don't need much to get a great Roon experience. I can run multiple rooms in my house off this sever without issue.

 

On the Roon trial. so far Quboz sounds better then Roon. are there sound settings that folks use to inprove roons sound?
best,
Josh

 

Hey Josh. This thread is useful for optimizing Roon, however I find it sounds just fine with stock settings. (I listen to Quboz 99 percent of the time through Roon).

Worth turning off some of these features that he mentions however. The thread also helps you set up the basics correctly for your DAC. The rest is just honestly insane and not needed to tweak. Lol.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/roon-optimization-guide-for-increased-sound-quality.968792/

 

Do you have your DAC connected to the computer where Roon runs on? If not, I refuse to believe that there’s anything in the settings that could make a difference, as long as you’re not experiencing full-blown dropouts.

Roon is sending data over a network in this case. The data will be hacked into packets that may or may not arrive in the correct order, the receiver will rearrange if required. These packets in turn are hacked into even smaller packets by lower network layers (Ethernet/Wi-Fi). All this is reassembled on the receiving end. As long as the Roon server isn’t under so high load that it can’t send packets quickly enough, I don’t see how anything that happens on the Roon server could affect the music.

It might be different if your DAC is directly connected to the Roon server. All extra CPU activity might generate EMI that might affect audio, possibly quickly changing load on the power supply (e.g. because CPU cores are switched on and off on demand) might leave its footprint on the ground pane which then transfers to USB and to the DAC … this is all imaginable and the reason why a good streamer can make a difference. But not over the network, IMHO, at least not in terms of one software sounding different from another (as long as the software doesn’t alter the audio), or even settings.

 

thanks all for the info, will try the settings. Not sure its for me as I listen to quboz using there software and it works fine. I do have my dac hardwired to my music computor which is running roon
best,
Josh

 

thanks for this I changed all that was in the article and it made a deffinite diference in sound quality, still not sure if I need it and it sound good now
best,
Josh

 

If you really want to dive down the Roon optimization rabbit hole... you could always try Diretta

 

Looks like I download it to my PC which directs my music comptor headless. Is that all thats needed? So the questions is I do not see what it does?
best,
Josh

 

Famish i just found your Diretta thread

 

I am going to order a fanless PC to run Roon core & HQPlayer, currently gravitating towards a Fit Tensor. I want to move away from MS Windows (they reboot your computer at their leisure now) and I have been out of the Linux distro game for a few years now.

Fit will install Linux Mint for you for $1.95 - save me some time. How much memory overhead are Linux distro's like Mint using these days? Can I get away with 8GB and run Linux w|GUI + Roon + HQPlayer (this computer won't be doing anything else) or do I need 16GB to play it safe?

edit: this will be headless as well, though I can't imagine that would effect Linux distro (VNC or whatever remote software flavor is good these days) but what about Roon & HQPlayer - anyone have issues with them on a headless compute?

 

If you don’t run browsers with a billion tabs 8gb is more than fine. Not sure how much HQ player needs though. But you’re looking at probably sub 1gb mem usage just running the os, maybe more but then it’s caching and can be reallocated. And if it’s a problem just upgrade the ram later? Not familiar with tue fit tensor though so no idea if it’s possible. But if in doubt get 16 and be safe for years to come.
That being said Roon can be a hog in my experience.

 

Can you give more details on the fit Tensor configuration? HQPlayer can be very demanding, depending on what you want to do (just PCM upsample vs DSD upsample/modulation, etc). Just for context, I run HQPlayer Embedded on a Ubuntu Server fan-cooled i9-11900, and it gets pretty hot, 50-70% all-cores load, for DSD256. HQPlayer does not need a lot of memory, ~600MB with my current filter/modulator configuration. But I run Roon elsewhere. As @Riotvan said, Roon can ask for a lot of memory, although for me it stays around 2GB. My Linux servers are all headless, I don't know how much memory is needed for the GUI.

 

I'm thinking about this:

Tensor-I22 – build-to-order – fit IoT (fit-iot.com)

it tops out with a i7-1185G7E . I assumed that would be enough for HQPlayer doing PCM > DSD conversion, but apparently not based on your experience . Roon appears to be much more efficient at PCM > DSD, as last few days I have been using it for conversion of PCM to 128X (7th order CLANS) and it uses just 30% or so of one core of my current i7-6700T, hitting one core for maybe 50-60% or so for 256x unless I'm misreading tast manager wrong or making some other mistake...

update: I just looked and saw I had setting "parrellize sigma-delta modulator" set to "yes" in Roon, but when I turned it off I saw one core indicates moderate use (maybe 40%?), and overall usage (which is an aveage of all cores I believe) still 8% or so...heck, even 256x coversion only takes overall usage up to 18% or there abouts, though it looks evenly distributed like maybe changing that setting does not actually stop Roon for distributing the work among all the cores!?

 

My Linux desktop has 16GB, I don’t have any swap configured, and it’s never been a problem. Running Roon + HQPlayer Embedded + KDE + browser and now and then more memory hungry stuff like Darktable or Libre Office.

So 8GB + swap should work, but might lead to swapping now and then, especially if a desktop environment like KDE or Gnome is running.

You could think about running HQPlayer Embedded instead of the desktop version. You could then completely get rid of a graphical UI. But you don’t have to decide now: The same license works for both Desktop and Embedded (on the same computer).

EDIT: I'm sorry, this was wrong information. I thought this was possible because both generate the same hardware fingerprint, but this fingerprint isn't even required to register HQP Desktop (different from HQP Embedded). When I actually tested my Embedded license in Desktop, it didn't work.

 

really? I didn't know that... I was running embedded and eventually moved away from it. If desktop will install on the same machine, I may play with that a little...

 

After some more time with PCM > DSD config within HQPlayer, I think @earnmyturns is right. My several year old 4 core i7-6700T has a base rate of 2.8 Ghz, but I limit it to 2.19 Ghz to keep fan from spinning up too much. As I said above, Roon is able to resample (PCM 41 to 192khz) > DSD 128x & 256X, putting only a moderate load on processor (no matter the parallelizing setting). HQPlayer however will max my processor converting PCM > DSD even to 64x (causing playback to pause/play/pause/play), no matter what config I seem to choose.

Am I missing a critical setting of some sort within HQPlayer? My GPU is Radeon, with an Intel something GPU on the motherboard as well, so CUDA is a not in the cards I don't believe unless Jussi has implemented the new method for using CUDA with Radeons.

In any case I'm thinking I might get a lessor processor now if HQPlayer PCM > DSD is a no-go in any reasonable fanless PC build. I will just run Roon, HQPlayer only in PCM > PCM upsampling mode which works fine for me now with little processor overhead...

 

Maybe, it has so many options! However, note that my performance assessment is for relatively expensive settings:

1x: poly-sinc-gauss-xla; Nx: poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp; modulator: ASDM7EC-super; bit rate: auto; rate limit: 12288000​

I suspect Roon uses simpler, less demanding processing.

I don't have a GPU, the HQPlayer server specs are:

• Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z590M-PLUS
• CPU: Intel i9-11900 11th Gen Comet Lake (8-Core, 16-Thread, 2.5GHz, 20 lanes, 65W, UHD Graphics 750, CPU Benchmark 24608)
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 Low Profile CPU Cooler
• RAM: 32GB Kingston DDR4 2666MHz (2x16GB KVR26N19S8/16)

I have another setup elsewhere with a Mac Mini M1 that performs comparably with HQPlayer, for a much lower cost.

I also have this server at home, currently running Roon (overkill):

• Case: HD Plex H1 Fanless Case
• Motherboard: ASRock Z790M-ITX WiFi ITX
• CPU: Intel i7-13700 13th Gen Raptor Lake (16-Cores, 8 P-core @ 5.2GHz & 8 E-core @ 4.1GHz, UHD Graphics 770, CPU Benchmark Up To 46618)
• RAM: 32GB Kingston Fury DDR5 5200MHz (2x16GB KF552C40BBK2-32)

When I have time, I should test HQPlayer with it.

BTW, for HQPlayer, the only thing that matters are the P(erformance) cores, as the E-cores are just an overlay for less demanding uses.