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Innous Zenith MKII and Roon DSP

I purchased an Innous Zenith MKII about 6 months and configured it to use Logitech Media Server.  I had used LMS for whole house stereo for many, many years.  I finally decided to use Roon instead, and while Roon doesn't meet all of my whole house stereo needs, the interface and music management capabilities are far superior to LMS, IMHO. 

Before enabling Roon, I reached out to Innuos tech support about the fact that Roon does not list the MKII as a recommend device.  From Innous tech support, " The MkII can run Roon very well, the only reason they suggest such a high system spec is for performing DSD upsampling which is by far the most intensive process Roon has. For normal usage and bitperfect playback, the MkII can easily run Roon, no problems there."

I'm not doing any DSD upsampling.  I am trying to use Roon's DSP capabilities, but I've experienced dropouts when I do.  Other than this problem, I'm quite OK using Room with the MKII when playing DSD, FLAC, and WAV files through a MyTek Liberty DAC, as well as, streaming Tidal MQA directly to my NAD M12 BluOS module.

I want to take advantage of Roon DSP capabilities and keep the MKII.  I leaning towards buying an Intel i7 NUC to run Roon Core and strictly use the MKII as my network media player/NAS.  Thoughts anyone?
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Showing 7 responses by oldschool1948

oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
I’m trying to decide between selling my MKII and buying a MKIII, or keeping the MKII and buying a NUC to host Roon Core.  I’m looking at this NUC that I found on Amazon:

Intel NUC NUC7i7BNH Mini PC/HTPC, Intel Dual-Core i7-7567U Upto 4.0GHz, 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth, Thunderbolt 3, 4k Support, Dual Monitor Capable, Windows 10 Pro (16GB RAM + 256GB SSD)

This is more of a does it make sense question than a money concern.  I’m trying to avoid going through the trouble of selling the MKII and moving my music library to a new device.  And the MKIII’s processor is no where near the NUC’s in terms of processing power.  So that’s a concern.

Does anyone see a downside of adding a NUC to the signal path to only host Roon Core? 
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
@david_ten. I’ll take look.  Thanks.
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
@david_ten Thanks for the advice.  My MKII has a 2TB SSD, so I ordered a unit without music storage.   I'll keep you posted.


oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
@jsqt.   I'm not sure what you are using DSP for if you are not doing upsampling, but it is true that DSD upsampling is the most memory-intensive operation. EQ and headroom probably would not cause as many issues as the upsampling to DSD 64.
I want to experiment with DSP, in general, to see where it can take me.  With the Zenith alone, I was unable to do that.  With the sonicTransporter, I will certainly try upsampling. 

I've spent a lot of time reading Roon documentation and blog posts.  I realize I have A LOT to learn about the software, and with so many capabilities and options, I'll have to invest a fair amount time tweaking and comparing setting changes.  I'm kinda sorta retired so I have much more time on my hands these days to play with Roon and, hopefully, take my overall system SQ up a notch or two :-).


oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
Thanks for the offer.  I will certainly do that.  Did you experience any loss of SQ running Core on the sonicTransporter?
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
I did looked at the power supplies on the SGC site.  The only one I saw for the  i7 sonictransporter was the 200W version, which seems like overkill for only one device.  Do you know of any other options?
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
146 posts
 
@david_ten   200W PS on the way.  Andrew assured me the unit came with a cord compatible with my Liberty DAC.  I was about to buy the Sbooster PS for the Liberty.  Boy, am I happy I waited.

Still waiting for the sonicTransporter to ship.  Once I get everything setup, I'll reach out to via PM.

Thanks for you help with all of this.
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