Can my Roon Nucleus be used with a non-Roon-ready DAC?

There is no such thing as Roon ready dac. Nucleus has hdmi, usb and ethernet ports. HDMI for use in system with non-usb dac, usb for ANY usb ported dac. Generally speaking, dac is more important than server to final sound quality, not to say Innuous wasn't contributing to sq. Still, Nucleus is pretty nice server, I'd not be thinking it weak link in chain.

“a dac doesn't need to be roon ready”
@jjss49 nailed it. A dedicated streamer or server like Innuos in almost all instances going to sound better than a Nucleus, Raspberry Pi or mac-mini. What you’ve heard was no fluke, in addition to investing into DAC and server like Innuos; look into installing a ethernet filter, ENO or Muon from Network Acoustics for exemplary streaming experience.

while it will work, running a dac directly out of the usb port of the roon nucleus is not advised if sound quality is a priority (if it isn't, one must ask why pursue all this roon stuff anyways, right?)

there is a whole industry segment on upgraded switches, network isolation/filters, usb cleansers, optical conversion modules and so on - purpose of which is to isolate the computing/data management aspect of roon (which produces substantial electrical 'grunge') from the delivery of the streamed audio signal to the dac/renderer

pulling the audio signal straight out of the nucleus (or other core machine) is the noisiest, least desirable way of listening to a system using roon - same reason why non-roon based streaming from an everyday non-dedicated pc is ill advised

if for background, ambient, non critical music, then yes, fine, but it is the worst way to get good sound from a roon-based setup

I'll repeat what I said above in a different way:  You can't tell the roon to just send a signal and you'll have a device there to recieve it.  Roon has to see your device before it will send a signal.  it will see any device that doesn't require a driver to be installed (basicly anyting less than 10 years old).  

but you have to open Roon and "Select audio device" that you want roon to send digital data to.  If roon doesn't see your device, you're out of luck.  

Thanks for the info everybody. I was actually able to get in touch with the DAC manufacturer, and he said that his DAC is Roon Ready. That said, I understand that as long as the DAC is new’ish, the Nucleus will be able to serve music to the DAC. I’m going over to my friend’s house with my Nuc to confirm. 

@jjss49 What you said about running the Nucleus directly into the DAC would be ill advised got me concerned….as that is exactly what I was thinking about doing. 

Also, I tried an experiment: I moved my nucleus over to my equipment area (unplugging the Nucleus from the cable/modem) and plugged it into the ethernet port on my wi-fi extender. It allowed me to stream music for about 30 seconds before stopping as it seems the bandwidth of info from the extender is not enough for the Nucleus (whereas it is more than enough for my current DAC). Any thoughts about how to solve this? I suppose I could just call the cable company and get them to install another cable outlet near my equipment rack so that I can plug the modem in physically close to my audio equipment. Any other thoughts about this?

I’m aware of ethernet switches, but not exactly sure how I might use them in my circumstance. 

Thanks again everybody….this is really helpful.