Why would I need Roon?

It could be because I’ve assembled computers and installed OS’s that roon seems very simple to me. When I say roon sounds better to me than other player software it’s a purely subjective opinion, I’ve never done a blind listening test. I think the main reason I feel it sounds better on Roon’s OS, ROCK is it doesn’t interfere with updates and running other processes in the background. Music not suddenly stopping for some unknown reason. ROCK is an extremely small linux OS designed by Roon specifically optimized for Roon playback. I assembled a NUC for about $600 installed Roon core and connected it to my network. I assembled a raspberry pi4 running Ropiee which also uses Roons transport protocol RAAT as a bridge and connected that to my network and to my DAC by USB. This all took about an hour and I was playing music. I also connected my ripped Flac files by USB to the NUC. I don’t really use a "dedicated " streamer, roon’s core/server acts as the streamer. If I wanted I could attach the NUC directly to my DAC and forgo the raspberry pi4.

@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).