Roon announces their new Nucleus One at only $499 shipped...

[Sonnie]

This is getting very close to the cost of a NUC and, in a nice case. The last NUC that I purchased was $468 shipped from Amazon. It was Barebone i5, with no RAM, SSD, or OS. Of course, the R.O.C.K. OS is free, so that's irrelevant in this case. However, this unit does come with the OS already on the drive, so there are no hassles loading it, which was slightly inconvenient for me. This supposedly has RAM, but not sure how much or what processor it has either. An SSD can be added, although just like for my NUC, I have my local music loaded on an external USB SSD so that I can load any new music I might acquire onto the drive via my laptop... it's easy to unplug the USB SSD from the NUC. It may also be easy enough to transfer it via the network from my computer, but I've never been able to see it on the network for whatever reasons.

$499 seems like it could be very reasonable... worth checking it out for me anyway.

Nucleus One

The Roon store offers a curated selection of audio equipment including all-in-one speakers, music servers & accessories. Get expert help and free US shipping.

store.roonlabs.com

 

[Todd Anderson]

SUPER cool. I love the idea of an affordable entry-level turn-key model. And you can load it up with 8TB of storage. That's more than enough storage. I just ran a music calculator... that's about 43,000 songs in FLAC 24/192. I can't imagine most folks will exceed that.

Are you thinking about getting one?

 

[JStewart]

Very tempting. It has HDMI onboard too for easy connection to an AVR or processor. That would make multi channel with Roon a possibility for me, anyway.

More than anything it’s great to see Roon moving forward with a product that is more affordable for many and turnkey. I still had some concerns about Roon’s future after being purchased by Harmon. In my pea brain, this move points to their trying to reach a broader market while keeping the architecture the same.

 

[Todd Anderson]

I'd like to say Harman is behind this move... but I'm sure a product like this has a lengthy design time. Much longer than since the acquisition.

 

[Sonnie]

Are you thinking about getting one?

You know it... it is on order. Took me about a minute to say yes.

Very tempting. It has HDMI onboard too for easy connection to an AVR or processor. That would make multi channel with Roon a possibility for me, anyway.

More than anything it’s great to see Roon moving forward with a product that is more affordable for many and turnkey. I still had some concerns about Roon’s future after being purchased by Harmon. In my pea brain, this move points to their trying to reach a broader market while keeping the architecture the same.

I think Harmon will finally get Roon over the hurdle with Atmos/360. I'm not all that crazy about most of the tracks I've heard thus far. To be quite frank, my two-channel sounds immersive already, and more true to what I think was intended. There seems to be too much gimmicky stuff going on, but as TRUE (real made-for multi-channel) becomes available, I think there can be something to it. There are some songs that should sound good remixed.

I'd like to say Harman is behind this move... but I'm sure a product like this has a lengthy design time. Much longer than since the acquisition.

Maybe Harmon at least influenced the pricing.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Oh man... Sonnie. You've got it bad! Look forward to a full rundown!

 

[Sonnie]

lol... I know, right?

I'm on my second Intel NUC from Amazon now. The first one went out after a lightning strike... nothing would work in it... had to start over. I'm very curious if there will be any difference. I'll keep my NUC for backup.

 

[Todd Anderson]

I know that Intel announced it was going to stop production of NUCs last year... did ASUS ever pick up the torch and carry it forward? Or is the NUC a dying breed?

 

[Sonnie]

I have not heard anything, but surely someone will make something similar.

 

[NBPK402]

I tninkI will preorder one the end of the month. I had been using NUCsfor Rock,and then moved to the Asus mini, and it is now failing too...time to try the Nucleus One.