Lumin X1 latest Review like we have been saying

Jorgean, Apple Music through Airplay may be very convenient but you are not getting the sound quality out of your Benchmark dac. 

If you like Apple Music get a trial Roon subscription and see how the Roon interface with Tidal compares. 

Roon is very graphical and works wonders, than you can explore adding a real server and running your dac with a real signal.

You will be shocked at how much better your system sounds.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

For those of us who continue to play digital through a simple/conventional means, i.e., through a CD player or use a PC for music files, occasionally a streaming service, e.g., Spotify, is there still a means for such a setup to compete with all the SOTA servers of today? .... or is it pretty much time to bite the bullet and get such a server?

I have read a little about Roon on various threads and sites but I have yet to find a writeup which is detailed and concise as the the pros/cons of Roon, why does one want or need it, and can many of us skip it altogether and stay focused on other digital front-end refinements?  Can some recommend ONE site/link where this is covered in such detail that such questions are answered?

@audiotroy:
I prefer Apple Music over Tidal. In my opinion it offers superior user guidance / playlists. It synchronises easily with all my Apple devices. 
As for SQ, difficult to compare but for shure good recordings sound good on either services and bad ones will sound bad, whatever resolution. As we all know blind test have shown that human can only hear a difference if the resolution goes beyond V -2 which is below 44kHz , 192 kbit/s. Apple is well within this spec with 256 kbit/s. Listen for example to some of Allan Taylor recordings which are usually of high quality, they sound great over Airplay. 

Roon, yes i did take a yearly subscription. The interface is great, very informative. I could probably find the same info in Wikipedia. As for SQ of Roon I must confess that I was disappointed, it sounded thin and liveless, compared to playing through the Bluesound App. I don‘t understand the hype, maybe I am missing something. 
Sounds all a bit negative, sorry for that. 

Jorgern, we have done tests of 16 bit 44khz digital and then the same piece of music up-sampled up to higher frequencies and also converted to DSD as well, if you can't hear the difference you really need to do a lot more testing or your gear doesn't have the resolution.

Airplay is a good convenience but in terms of sound quality, Tidal sounds better running through Roon and being up-sampled to higher frequencies sounds way better, 24 bit 192k sounds good, on our test dacs the sound becomes airy more relaxed and the entire sound stage sounds bigger, at DSD sampling the midrange usually sounds more full and the top end all sounds a bit more rolled off in a good way.

One of the keys to running Roon is to use the DSP functions and then run the up-sampler.

As per features of Roon that people like:

1: Whole house audio you can control Sonos, Naim, Nad Blue sound, Chromecast, Apple Airplay, Heos, and many other devices all through one convenient interface with grouping and syncronization.

2: The ability to use DSD functionality to change low res digital into high res digital be it PCM or DSD.

3: Roon Radio which selects music based on what you are playing as well as selections from Tidal and Obouz. 

4: Integration of stored music and streaming services

5: A superb user interface with album bio

6: Understanding the way that each artist has similar artists, artists which are impacted by the original artist, similar, following, influenced tabs which help you identify new artists.

Roon has the best music interface, Blue Sound's interface pales in comparison.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

It is hard to do a write up about the pros and cons of ROON because ROON is a dynamic software system. In the sense that it is continually being updated with new features. I have been a lifetime member even before they released version 1.0 and I have seen all the new features that have been added. The best place to learn about ROON is not here but in the ROON forum.

https://community.roonlabs.com/

For example, 2 recent additions are making my lifetime membership a homerun. One is the music discovery feature that was recently added. MP3 streaming services have had this before (Pandora, Apple, etc..) but ROON did not. I have both Qobuz and Tidal and my ROON clients discovery feature has recently made me add about 30 new albums. My recent favorite being Betty Davis, the female James Brown or is James Brown the male Betty Davis. 

The second relatively new feature in ROON is the Convolution engine that will allow me to do DSP WITHOUT any new audio hardware. That is gold to me. 

ROON is evolving and for me a gorgeous audio client with both great reliability and features.