Does Roon sound better?

All software sounds different. Any software has better sq than iTunes. I liked DS Lightning over Mac mini running audirvana 2.x. Since I replaced my Auralic Aries with external dac with usb to running ps audio DS with bridge with Roon, sq is much better. I can’t do an a/b comparison using roon vs DS Lightning because DS Lightning won’t see the DS bridge. 

I’m not totally sure which difference you are seeing but if the same Tidal bits are making their way to the dac then it shouldn’t matter. It could be one of those two is decoding and re-encoding, like AirPlay does. For th OPs case, sending Tidal data to the dac over WiFi with Tidal directly or with Roon should result in the exact same data stream making it to the dac. 

mayoradamwest,
You really should do more playing with the different software. They all sound different. I stll like and LOVE mpd. Its got the magic!

Thank you all !!!