MikeH
Well-Known Member
Very curious about building a Mini Mac set-up. I'm contemplating one now dedicated to music in order to move music files off of my shared family iMac. @romany - how would you recommend I get started? Would love the insights of others as well.
I have an old Mini (2012) that I thought about using for this purpose for a while but never went that route. Since I have Roon, my goal for streaming is to build a NAS and use an iPad (mini?) as the remote / now playing screen and my Node as the end point
I have Roon with an intel NUC running Roon rock OS. It was not expensive put together. Of course if you have a Mac Mini already (or don't want to pay for Roon, that may be a different story). I wanna say I built the entire thing including a 1TB SSD for under $400. And it's extremely simple to set up.Apparently the NAS’ that support being a roon core can struggle with the Roon core software, it demands more resources than they are designed for. You could use a computer as the core and just store on the NAS too I suppose but having the comp on all the time has to be a pain. I really liked the intel NUC with a big hard drive running with the roon rock software as a headless always on roon core.
I really love it so far. I can just drop any music files onto it wirelessly through my network when I download or rip something. We have a LOT of ways to play music in our house (google home in the kitchen, sonos in various rooms, then high res with external DAC set ups in my office and living room. Living room has an Aries Mini Roon Ready end point and my office DAC is hooked up to my computer and works as an end point if my comp is on and running Roon. That comp is always on anyway because it syncs all my work files via Dropbox. Roon can be sent to any of my devices to stream through the app (with varying levels of quality of course depending on the inputs on those speakers). It's all really seamless and connects Qobuz/Tidal as well. Just one big library.
I used to have a NAS and a separate computer setup for my high res streaming and it was a bit annoying for me personally. Things have likely changed since I did that though (5+ years ago). The NUC is just next to my router and requires no maintenance right now.
Happy to answer any questions if I can if the NUC is something you may want to explore. I feel like @Joe Mac and some others here helped me figure out what to buy for the NUC.