@itoakio and @Daniel_Francis
Thanks for your explanations which make a lot of sense. I’m now left with the dilemma about what to do. The Qobuz Connect sound reproduction is so good that it is difficult to go back to streamer. But the UI of Roon is so much better than anything else existing on the market that it is difficult to drop the streamer. I am enquiring about the option of buying a dedicated NAS which can host Roon : looks like QNAP has a Roon compatibility : Roon on NAS | Building the ultimate music server | QNAP, in order to be able to read local files. My understanding is the Roon server function can be fullfilled by the NAS in some cases.
Anyone having a MSB DAC, tried this solution : Roon on a NAS ? And more specifically on a QNAP ? (I am not specifically aiming at this brand but I want to make sure Roon will be easy to install on the future NAS)
Roon on a NAS has gotten tricky of late for assorted reasons. But doable.
There is a program called Docker (different names for some NAS devices) that basically function as a virtual machine, whose purpose is to run programs on the NAS. It is a rather standard interface, that a programmer can make only one version of his program run on many types of NAS devices. Currently you will need to learn how to do this. The guy that made up the Roon programs to run on the NAS appears to be working on this type of application.
The alternative that I employ involves an additional device. I got an Intel NUC, and installed the Roon “ROCK” operating system on the NUC, making it a dedicated Roon server, which references the music directory on my NAS. (I find it much easier to manage my files on the NAS vs the internal storage of the ROCK)
I can then use the Renderer v2 to either play from Roon, or Qobuz Connect. Minimserver does still run on my QNAP server, allowing me to play with JPlay, with the same music directory.
Try Qobuz via JPlay. It’s almost equal to connect from a sound quality perspective, if you don’t like the Qobuz Connect UI. It can also play from a server for local files.
My Roon Core runs on a Synology NAS and I use my Renderer V2 as a Roon endpoint. It has worked flawlessly for the last 5 years. Most consumer NAS units have low power processors and minimal amounts of memory. I recommend adding memory if you go this route. Linux adds any unused memory to the file system cache, which helps Roon’s performance. The low power processors would probably be a problem if you turn on any DSP features in Roon. I run Roon in bit perfect mode and this is a very light CPU load. Sound quality is perfect in my opinion.
