Comments on: Roon Server on ODroid H2

By: John Reekie

John Reekie — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:19:45 +0000

Still working on it, it was initially an experiment, this graphic gives an idea of the load (via netdata, still figuring that out too...). The load when streaming is higher than file playback.

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 05:44:25 +0000

I think RAATServer may handle FLAC internally, but Roon uses ffmpeg for everything else (ALAC, MP3, AAC, …). And there is a lot of decoding/transcoding going on. 24- or 32-bit PCM gets sent down the wire and “volume-leveling,” if you have that turned on, does an intermediate conversion to 64-bit float. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure dual-channel RAM does speed things up.

Even so I’m a bit surprised at how light a load Roon is so I’m now running it virtualized on “half” the H2.

That’s kinda hilarious. I’m curious to learn what you use the other “half” for.

One thing that impresses me is how cool the H2 runs. CPU core temperatures hover at 39℃ — cooler than any of my Raspberry Pi’s. Under load, the temperature does shoot up, but (in normal use) Roon does not seem to be much of a load.

By: John Reekie

John Reekie — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 04:57:03 +0000

Good point, I suppose Roon would use ffmpeg for FLAC (and other) decoding. I did put another stick in mine 🙂 Even so I’m a bit surprised at how light a load Roon is so I’m now running it virtualized on “half” the H2.

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 16:28:55 +0000

Here's a good review of the Odroid H2. One of the points made is that, for the sort of tasks that Roon engages in, you get a 20% speed boost if you install the RAM in matched pairs as opposed to using a single module. At these prices, we're talking about a ~15% increase in the total cost, for a comparable increase in performance.

By: John Reekie

John Reekie — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 09:02:39 +0000

In terms of CPU performance, the RX-421ND in the TS-473 has similar geekbench results to the J4105 in the ODroid H2, so they are roughly equivalent. In the ODroid configuration outlined above the system drive is SSD as recommended by Roon, whereas with the TS-472 it’s not clear whether an installed M.2 SSD can be used similarly, so that would be something to look into. Of course, the TS-473 can hold 4 drives in RAID and has other NAS features but at a substantially higher price. Hope that helps 🙂

By: JY

JY — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 02:33:29 +0000

Has anyone compared performance of these mini server to ROON Server capable QNAP such as the QNAP TS-473?

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 06:17:13 +0000

Like BubbleUPnP, in the other thread, Roon (both *Server and *Bridge), by default, runs as root. On general grounds, this is a bad idea. Particularly so, for a program that updates itself over an unencrypted web connection.

Fortunately, this is easy to fix. For RoonServer,

% sudo systemctl stop roonserver
% sudo adduser –system –group –home /var/roon roon
% sudo adduser roon audio
% sudo chown -R roon:roon /opt/RoonServer /var/roon
% sudo chmod 755 /opt/RoonServer

Now edit /etc/systemd/system/roonserver.service and add the line:

User=roon

to the [Service] section of that file. Finally

% sudo systemctl daemon-reload
% sudo systemctl start roonserver

The only thing the unprivileged “roon” user can’t do is mount remote volumes. So if your music is (say) on a Samba server on your network, you’ll have to mount it for him.

First create a file to hold your Samba credentials

% sudo nano /var/roon/.smb

and add your credentials to it:

user=xxxx
password=yyyy

For good measure, make it readable only by root

% sudo chmod 600 /var/roon/.smb

Now add a line to the end of /etc/fstab :

//192.168.xxx.yyy/Music /media/Music cifs credentials=/var/roon/.smb,uid=roon,gid=roon 0 0

where you want to put in the actual IP address of your Samba server and the name of the Samba share (which I, unimaginatively, called “Music”).

Finally

% sudo mount -a

and your music should all be found locvally at the mount point /media/Music . Point Roon at that local directory instead of the remote Samba server, and you’re good to go.

For RoonBridge, the procedure is the same, but a little simpler

% sudo systemctl stop roonbridge
% sudo adduser –system –group –home /var/roon roon
% sudo adduser roon audio
% sudo chown -R roon:roon /opt/RoonBridge
% sudo chown -R roon:roon /var/roon

As before, add the line:

User=roon

to the [Service] section of /etc/systemd/system/roonbridge.service . Then

% sudo systemctl daemon-reload
% sudo systemctl start roonbridge

and you’re done.