Audiophiles are known to pay eye-watering pricing for what is, at times, just standard hardware. However, Roon Labs has taken it to a new level — the company isn't even sharing some of the critical specs of its new $3,699 PC for audiophiles. The company has been teasing the upcoming release of the new higher-end version of its existing Nucleus line of NUC-powered audiophile PCs dubbed the Nucleus Titan. Pictures of three customized Nucleus Titan units were posted to its Twitter page (embedded below), which we spotted thanks to FanlessTech.
The $3,699 price point would be difficult to justify for even a truly high-end PC but seems particularly heavy-handed for what seems to be a perfectly ordinary Intel NUC PC on the inside. But that might even be somewhat acceptable if Roon Labs weren't willfully obfuscating any actual CPU and RAM specs on product pages for other Nucleus units and all press material for the Nucleus Titan so far.
A previous tease during CES 2024 pretty much has the exact same PR-speak text about the Nucleus Titan that the YouTube video description does. Claims include "36% CPU performance improvement," "37% more power efficient," and "80% increase in RAM speed and memory bandwidth over Nucleus Plus," but no actual listing of the CPU used is given. In fact, the product listings for Nucleus and Nucleus Plus, which are already out, also don't provide the specific CPU or RAM specs.
The three models of the Nucleus Titan come with a Metal, Stone, or even Wood shell, depending on the aesthetic you're gunning for. They all look exceedingly premium and make the most of the NUC form factor, visually speaking.
Roon Labs also posted a 360-degree video look at the Stone version of the unit on YouTube, claiming it to be "Coming Soon." However, a product listing for ordering the unit is yet to be seen on its official website, which currently only lists the original Nucleus and Nucleus Plus units for purchase.
It's understood in high-end audio hardware circles that audiophiles are perfectly willing to overspend on sound hardware, but usually, that means actual sound devices that can at least quantify their performance in the form of spec sheets with frequency range and other key metrics.
No matter who you are, though, we think it's fair to say that you deserve to know exactly what you are buying when you are asked to spend $3,699 on the unit before taxes or add an actual storage drive.
While audiophile circles seem to generally praise Roon Labs' Media Server solution for features like bit-perfect streaming, it's very important in this context to know that you can install the Media Server on just about any PC you want. However, there is a monthly subscription fee. You do not need to spend thousands of dollars for a PC to listen to music good, we promise.
An opinion piece from SoundNews released shortly after the CES-timed tease has similar concerns to our own. According to them, the Nucleus and Nucleus Plus were using Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, respectively— so judging by that and the relative performance statements, we imagine the Titan may at least pack a Core i9.
But at this price point— and really, the other Titan units, too— needing to speculate about what CPU you are actually going to get if you buy the unit is unacceptable. There is no good-faith reason for Roon Labs to obfuscate this information from the end consumer, no matter how cool its NUC enclosure or media server software is.
