Roon for high end audio?

@sbank Well if not interested in even a small DIY, then the SonicOrbiter maybe a good option and based on my experience weighing everything, better than putting out lots of $ on Innuos or other high cost servers, which IMO are overrated. But if you are ok with minimal DIY with nothing more that a screw driver and using a USB computer keyboard, a monitor and a cable to connect a NUC to the monitor then I think the NUC is superior to the SonicOrbitor i5. First of all, if you price out the components in the i5 you are way overpaying for the SonicOrbiter. Plus I am not sure SGC is transparent about the amount of RAM and size of SSD in there. With the NUC you can buy everything on Amazon or eBay. You need a NUC, some RAM (I recommend 32GB) and an M.2 SSD. I recommend 240 or 256 GB. You unscrew the NUC, snap in the RAM and secure the M.2 SSD with a supplied screw. You download ROCK from the help.Roonlabs.com website on a flash drive and follow the easy instructions to minimally adjust the NUCs BIOS settings and install ROCK on the NUC and you are practically done. I did this as a pandemic DIY project. I have a periodic small familial tremor and I was able to do this. I was able to build a NUC 10th Gen i7 with 32GB and 256 GB SSD. I put this in an Akasa heat sink case per the how to videos on YouTube and I built an over specd Roon Core that I can say is better and more powerful than the SonicOrbiter, the Nucleus and the Innuos Zenith Mk3. Plus it beats them all on cost and is at least their equal on SQ. I would venture to say perhaps even better. Roon remote runs snappy with zero glitches. Lastly, no need to pay SGC $29 or so periodically for an firmware upgrade. So I don’t think building a NUC or configuring BIOS and installing ROCK is daunting at all and I am not a computer or IT guy. You also gain the satisfaction of making this yourself and saving lots of $ for some other piece of gear!

If you have a USB DAC, can you just take USB off of your room core and feed it directly to the DAC? Or do you need an endpoint in between? I have a hollo May dac that has USB input.

I stand corrected on SGCs reporting of RAM and SSD. As you can see 8GB and 64 GB is the *bare minimum* for Roon to be functional and forget any DSP. Plus they are using a Gen3 i5! We are up to Gen10 now and soon Gen11 if it isn’t here already? The investment in their unit is at the bare minimum. Everyone can build with minimal skill a Roon Core server that blows this thing away. Like it said I built a fanless Gen10 i7 with 32GB RAM and 256GB SSD that blows that thing away for a fraction of the cost. Oh, and canceling Roon? Who would ever do that? I have a lifetime subscription and is the biggest bang for the buck in my listening room. It is fantastic for music discovery and sound quality. I think there is some Squeezlite and HQ player integration. But I don’t use that. But for Roon you can’t beat a NUC you build yourself. IMO the Roon Core server vendors in our hobby are not making anything near worth the money. The incremental improvement if there is any isn’t there and I proved it to myself with my InnuOS Zenith Mk3 and PhoenixUSB USB which are since sold. The added benefit of the NUC, and this applies to the STi5 is separation of the streamer from the server. The last thing, I want to say about this is, if you have a high priced Roon core server and you like it, terrific! But what I am pointing out to my colleagues here is that, if you are interested there is a lower cost/high quality Roon core server option that is easy to make that will free up thousands of dollars in your system without any loss in SQ and possibly some gains, you have an option here. I know this because I have experience this and done this myself. 

@peter_s you need a streamer in between. You can also have your Roon core server on your network etherneted to a switch and you can Ethernet your streamer for best results from the same switch. Then run USB out from the streamer to the DAC. You can make this configuration more complicated and sophisticated with other devices and optical but the above is the basic configuration. Having the streamer separate from the Roon Core shields it to a degree (large? small?) from any noise the server produces.