Is the Roon Nuceus device a good streamer?

In my experience an Innuos Zenith Mk3 running Roon doesn‘t sound anywhere near as good as running native; the Zenith in Roon beats the Nucleus by a country mile, so: no, the Nucleus is not a top server/streamer

emergingsoul,

There is lots to learn in the new world of digital audio and streaming.  With the Roon Nucleus (or Nucleus Plus), the server is connected to the internet and (in my case) to an external hard drive via the USB connection, the second USB connection for outputting the digital signal to my external DAC.  I also have a subscription to Qobuz for streaming (I had Tidal in the past as well).  So when I access my library with the Roon app, and search for content (like "Beatles"), the Roon server shows my library as the content on my hard drive+the content for the Beatles on my Qobuz subscription.

So, to stream music, in addition to a server, like the Roon server (or a computer) you will need a subscription (like one to Tidal or Qobuz) and output the digital signal to a DAC, which might be built into your amplifier.

I want to stress the fact that I have zero issues with my sonicTransporter i5 when using as a Roon core/server. It has been rock solid and plays all my songs, including several DSP settings for my headphones, without a hitch, My comment about not getting optimal sound when connecting directly to my DAC (Cambridge Audio Azur 851D) in the headphone system is not a shortcoming of sonicTransporter. In all likelihood, it's probably the USB implementation of the DAC or the cable.