Roon presents an even more powerful Nucleus: The Nucleus Titan
Announced at the CES 2024 but still not present on the brand’s official website (except on its blog), the Nucleus Titan is designed to further improve the results of file playback via Roon software. While Roon has been trying for years to establish itself in as many audiophile network players (Roon Ready) as possible, the brand now also allows third-party brands to offer true Roon servers (Roon Core), thus replacing a Nucleus, that can be done for example by the Silent Angel Rhein Z1 described in our Vumètre 49 (English Vumetre #7).
Dedicated to further enhancing the Roon experience and playback stability of files read from internal memory or streamed from the Tidal, Qobuz or Spotify platforms, the Titan is claimed to offer 36% more processor performance than the Nucleus Plus, while consuming 37% less power and increasing RAM playback speed by 80%. It also benefits from the latest SSD enhancements, with a choice of 0TB, 2TB, 4TB or 8TB, while connectivity gains two USB-C ports, in addition to the two USB-A and two HDMI ports already present on the Nucleus Plus (the classic Nucleus has only one HDMI).
Of course, all these improvements, in addition to a machined aluminum chassis and a choice of metal, wood or stone (composite) finishes, come at a price: while the Roon Nucleus starts at $1,459 and the Nucleus Plus at $2,559, the Nucleus Titan is priced at $3,699, to which we recommend to add at least 2TB of optional storage to benefit from the greater reliability of playback on internal memory, rather than streaming.