Running AIR & ROON on an Intel NUC

[Hifi_swlon]

Danny Dulai/Roon posted an interesting set of comments about ROCK and the Nucleus in the Roon forum here:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-do...h/25971/42

The part I found most interesting...

Turn-key solutions sold through the HiFi retail channel require margins for the distributors and the dealers. If you want to do this cheap, use ROCK + build yourself a NUC. No one can compete on price with that. We will soon have a button on our website that will add the suggested components to your amazon shopping cart.

Later in that post he estimates ~ $400 for an i3 NUC.    At this  point, I'd definitely wait for further clarification from Roon on the best NUC config for ROCK.

There are also questions in that thread about ROCK and Devialet AIR.   To that, Danny replied...

We messed up with that Devialet thing. I'll say more soon.

No idea what that might mean, but if Roon and Devialet now actually have a relationship, that's got to be good news.   Let's hope Devialet thinks so too.

How unique is this in the audio industry? I don't recall it elsewhere - coming up with an OS you can put in a case and sell through dealers, but also give it away for free (with a list of hardware you should buy) and let people have it cheaper?

I guess the money is made on the Roon subscription rather than hardware, so any ways of getting more subscribers is a good thing for Roon.

I like the device but if I ever went away from my Mac mini I'd probably go DIY as it is a fair bit more to pay. It is a nice case though - would have to see it in the flesh but it wouldn't live in the lounge anyway. I think they would have been better to do an i5 version. Since that fits the price/performance of a lot if users, it kind if forces people on the fence to go DIY.