Since its introduction in 2015, Roon has made a huge impact in the audio market thanks to its unique combination of great functionality, focus on high-end sound and a metadata library that's in a class of its own. By transforming the way we experience music, and taking a hardware-agnostic approach to the market, Roon is setting the new standard on how audio lovers engage with their music.
As a result of its success, more and more people have been building dedicated servers on which to run Roon, but while devout hobbyists and single-source users may get everything they need by building their own system, many DIY solutions fall short of the expected standard to function in a high-performance environment. Roon Labs, the developers behind Roon, therefore decided to introduce two server solutions of their own: Nucleus and Nucleus+.
As you may or may not have already heard direct from Roon, during October and while stocks last, we will be offering the standard Roon Nucleus pre-installed with a 1TB SSD hard drive at no extra cost. This means you have rock-solid reliable storage built into the ultimate Roon core, straight out of the box.
Roon software can be used on many platforms, including Mac, Windows, and Linux PCs, as well as NAS devices and a variety of media servers. Each of those platforms has its benefits and shortcomings, but none of them achieves a perfect balance between ease of use, raw performance, audiophile design, and the helping hand of a retailer.
Based on feedback from audio dealers and custom integrators, Roon designed Nucleus to do just that... provide the best Roon experience in each of these areas.
Roon has enjoyed tremendous success among computer audiophiles and other tech-savvy enthusiasts, but their long-term goal is to reach everyone who loves music. To do that, they created Nucleus, a product which requires nearly no computer knowledge or networking skill. You literally take it home, plug it in, and control it with the Roon Remote app for iPad, iPhone, or Android device (and of course the Roon app for Mac/Windows). Because it's running Roon, Nucleus finds the audio devices on your network and makes it easy to stream to them.
Unlike simple music player apps, Roon is designed to make use of modern computing power (and the more of it the better). So Roon have worked with Intel to develop Nucleus on their highest-performance NUC platform, which means that using Roon with Nucleus feels incredibly fast, and there's horsepower to spare for handling large music libraries, multi-room streaming, and digital signal processing all within a secure and reliable framework.
This thoughtfulness toward reliable use in even the most demanding environments means that, in combination with the server's lower power consumption, passive cooling system and compact form, you really can leave Nucleus on and just forget about it. But more than that, the overall design inside and out also guarantees a true audiophile performance.
Take a look at this White Paper from the team at Roon, which details why Nucleus is the best way to run Roon.
Rather than use a desktop or server operating system like Windows, a Linux distribution, or a system-builder tool, Roon realised that a truly bespoke operating system is an area in which they can add real value to their product. Roon OS is an optimised Linux-based operating system developed by Roon Labs to provide the best reliability and performance for what Roon does – networking, storage, and fast database access – and nothing else. The white paper provides loads of detail about how they achieved this, and what's unique about their over-the-air software/firmware update process.
A fundamental benefit of this means that unlike the Roon program you may install onto a laptop, the Roon ROCK OS you may use to build a DIY server, or even the Roon CORE server solutions offered by other manufacturers, Roon have optimised Roon OS specifically for Nucleus. This means Nucleus can work with new and sometimes unique features. Because Roon have a handle on exactly what Nucleus can do, Nucleus users will be the only people in a position to reap the full benefits of Roon OS.
