Why would I need Roon?

@jaytor 

The EtherRegen and AES/EBU could be the difference maker. I may switch my DAC —->Amp Interconnnects over to balanced and see if that makes a difference. Might be down stream to far to have much affect. 

@djones now that you bring sound quality into it I am a bit more motivated and I'm not that uncomfortable with installing software or running it. I tried audirvana on my Mac and thought it sounded better.

Interestingly, I find Roon's UI was the major issue. I get all of those things with Spotify Premium in a much better and easier way across all my devices. Tidal, Qubuz etc do not come anywhere close to Spotify Connect.

As for music quality, nothing will change the original source. AudioNirvana helped a bit, but again, clunky UI across devices.

Spotify has incredible depth of music for those who listen to a range of music, including Scandinavian, African, old jazz, etc. Tidal is around 90%, Apple Music around 95%, and Qubuz and Amazon around 80% of my playlists.

I agree that Spotify offers a better UI than Tidal and Qobuz. Since I can't access my Roon library from my phone, I usually use Spotify with Apple Carplay in the car. I also find it good for finding new music, although Roon Radio has gotten extremely good at recommending new content. 

I think Spotify's search is better than Roon. If I see a recommendation for a song that doesn't include the album information, it's often a lot easier to figure out what album it is on using Spotify than Roon. 

If Spotify offered uncompressed CD quality (let along hi-rez), it would be a lot closer to meeting my needs. But the ability to create a combined library between my ripped CDs, downloaded hi-rez files, Tidal, and Qobuz, makes Roon the clear winner for me.

The ability control multiple zones and have them synchronized when I'm playing the same content is also a big plus, as is having DSP functionality (upsampling and EQ when needed).

@ jaytor

"I did not hear a difference between Roon and Manic Moose, but far prefer Roon for all the reasons mentioned above (UI, library integration, multi-zone support, DSP processing)."   

OK... that sounds more logical.