Roon’s line of music servers has been known for quality but had a high price tag – until now. The latest Nucleus One server aims to make Roon’s innovative music technology accessible to a broader audience. This new offering is the most cost-effective Roon server currently available, priced at less than a third of previous models.
Despite the lower price point, Roon assures that the Nucleus One maintains performance levels comparable to its predecessors, offering robust reliability and high performance.
Enno Vandermeer, the founder of Roon, expressed that the mission has always been to make Roon accessible to as many individuals as possible. Since the inception of the Sooloos system nearly twenty years ago, the goal has been to create a solution that they would proudly recommend to friends and family. According to Vandermeer, the Nucleus One serves as “a dedicated Roon server at the price of a standard mini PC”.
For those unfamiliar with Roon, it is part of the Harmann audio family, which includes renowned brands like AKG, JBL, and Mark Levinson. Roon’s music servers are designed to provide a unified, user-friendly, and multi-room compatible interface for your music library, offering a seamless experience akin to “a navigable, searchable digital magazine encompassing your entire music collection”. Beyond local music storage, Roon is also compatible with top-tier music streaming services such as Tidal, Qobuz, and KKBOX, creating a consistent user experience across various platforms.
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Roon Nucleus One: price and specifications
The new Roon Nucleus One is crafted from polycarbonate and designed to mirror the premium Nucleus Titan server. It features a 2.5-inch drive tray that supports up to 8TB of SATA storage via SSDs or traditional hard drives.
Additionally, it accommodates USB drives through its Type A connector at USB 3.0 speeds, along with an Ethernet connector for networked devices and HDMI for stereo and multi-channel audio output. The Linux-based Roon OS software can manage a library of up to 10,000 albums or 100,000 tracks, supporting audio output to six different multi-room zones. Equipped with a quiet internal fan for optimal cooling, the server can be controlled using the Roon app on both Android and iOS devices.
The Roon Nucleus One is priced at $499 in the US and is set to launch on May 15, 2024.
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