NUC - Roon Rock or Win10 Pro

[Sonnie]

I currently have a laptop running Roon Core at the moment, but looking to go the server route. I will continue to use my laptop as the controller, but I’ve found that when I’m doing some other things on my laptop that it can cause some audio drop outs. The server will be placed in another room on a different circuit than my dedicated listening room.

I plan on using Convolution, or at least testing it again Dirac Live, and I may use some of the other DSP options at some point. For no more that the extra will cost me, I may as well grab an i7 and be done with it.
Looking at the 10th gen Intel NUC10i7FNH1 (NUC10i7FNx on the Roon approved list) with 16GB Ram and a SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 250GB - PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Then I’ll get a separate USB SSD for music storage. Total about $725 without the storage SSD.

The question is should I run Roon ROCK or Win10 Pro? I’m only going to use it for music at this point, with Roon, but I may later add Plex and do movies as well. I suppose I could always start with ROCK and then later add an O/S that will support both. I suppose ROCK would also eliminate using JRiver, but either way, I'm using Roon more and more as my exclusive music software.

Opinions, thoughts, comments?

Regards,
Sonnie

 

[Kal Rubinson]

It should be entirely adequate for stereo with some DSP. If you are entertaining multichannel and/or HQPlayer, you might be pushing.

AFAIK, DiracLive will not run under ROON.

 

[Sonnie]

Hello there Kal... fancy seeing you here. I just found this place. They are all on top of this stuff pretty well it seems.

I run Dirac Live on my NAD M17 as a Roon endpoint, no issues, but Convolution has to run on the Roon Core from what I understand.

Regards,
Sonnie

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I run Dirac Live on my NAD M17 as a Roon endpoint, no issues, .............

Ah. That's doable.

Convolution has to run on the Roon Core from what I understand.

Yes unless you have another option.