Why would I need Roon?

unless roon is that much better.

it is.

I'd happily go back to Roon if someone could tell me how to make it sound as good as Audirvana and the Bluesound Node. Both sound much better.  And that's what's most important to me. 

I’d try Audirvana if it would run on an minimalist OS designed specifically for music playback instead of windows or iOS. That could be why Roon sounds better to me.

@djones51 - Why not send it to a Raspberry Pi?  You're already using a Roon Bridge to play Roon.  How is that different?

I do send it to a raspberry pi4 running Ropiee as a bridge. I use ROCK on a NUC for the core running in my office. The difference is I can run ROCK headless 24/7 , it's optimized for music playback,  self updates and I don't have to mess with windows. If Audirvana could run on a small linux distro headless I would try it but I've never cared for any music programs I've tried with windows. Roon is much simpler and I find the SQ superior at least the way I run it I didn't when I tried it on windows.