I don't know that you need roon but the reason I got roon was the user interface and sound quality. In my subjective opinion as I never tested blind is roon has better sound quality over my Node2i, both with my ripped CDs and Quboz. I like the user interface a lot better and the fact with roon I don't really need a dedicated streamer. I let the core handle the streaming and use a roon bridge with RAAT to connect to my DAC. The DAC controls the clock of the stream and IMO gives me a nice simple solution with excellent SQ.