A digital heavyweight
One of the more exclusive audio announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January was that Roon was launching a new flagship server, marking the brand’s first hardware launch since it was acquired by Harman International (parent company of audio brands Harman Kardon, JBL, Arcam, Mark Levinson, AKG and Revel) in November.
The impressively titled Nucleus Titan is naturally designed to work with the service’s digital music management platform, and brings several equally impressive features to the table, not to mention your choice of three snazzy new outer shells — metal, stone composite and wood.
The Nucleus Titan features a precision-machined billet aluminium enclosure made from a solid metal block, with Roon citing advancements in “manufacturing processes and hardware customization” that have allowed it to deliver a stylish “statement piece” with the three finish options for that interchangeable top plate.
Like Roon’s previous flagship, the Nucleus Plus, the new Titan is a dedicated server/streamer optimised to work with Roon’s OS to deliver “bit-perfect playback” of your hi-res digital music collection to a Roon-compatible hi-fi system. Where the Titan supposedly surpasses its predecessor is in performance quality and its self-cooling design with “silent, fan-less operation”.
The Titan also sports a pair of USB-C, USB-A and audio-only HDMI ports and comes in three internal storage sizes: 2TB, 4TB and 8TB. Which you decide on will naturally impact the price, though the base model (no storage) costs $6,299.
The original Nucleus and step-up Nucleus Plus had starting prices of $1,459 and $2,599 respectively, so we’re talking about an ambitious step up in price (and hopefully performance) here. Both older Nucleus models are now discontinued.
The Roon software itself isn’t exactly cheap either, of course, costing $15 USD per month or $12.49 per month if you pay the annual fee upfront. Want a lifetime subscription? A single $830 payment gives you full investment in what Roon can do — which is, by the way — a lot.
For the uninitiated, Roon is a music management platform that combines your stored digital music files with millions of tracks from Tidal and Qobuz (provided you have a subscription to them) into a single, searchable, dynamic interface that includes artist bio, liner notes and more. An impressive number and variety of modern streaming hi-fi kit is compatible with the platform, too.
Of the new hardware launch, Roon co-founder Enno Vandermeer said: “Nucleus Titan continues our long-standing goal of providing customers with Roon server options that correspond with their specific needs and desires. CPU and SSD technology has evolved significantly since we first released Nucleus, and we’ve taken advantage of those innovations. With Titan, we’ve created a highperformance device that fuses precision manufacturing with aesthetics that evoke the interwoven nature of our music collections and Roon’s finesse for music exploration. We’re very excited with the results and our ability to provide our customers with the ultimate Roon software platform.”