To ROON or not to ROON ?

I’m sure all the streamer mentioned are excellent.   The U2 mini has the best selection of output types no doubt but I think I’ll be fine with either USB or SPDIF output on the Aurender 

I don’t see buying anything like an Esoteric or dcs where there are i2s and multiple ins and outs including clocks.   All I care about is some flexibility and whether the streamer or the DAC controls the clock depending on which DAC I use.  

For me when I upgraded from a Macbook Pro with Amarra (great sounding software with an iffy interface) to a Bricasti M5 I had to move on to either Roon MConnect or Audirvana.  Did trials on all three and MConnect was off the table immediately.  I really liked Roon and with all the updates to Audirvana’s interface it is really good as well.  I chose Audirvana since i like their interface format and it’s half the monthly subscription price.  Time will tell if I decide to switch to Roon at some point.   I would recommend doing the trials and have fun with it.

I also was Roon tested several years ago and found it not worthwhile. Several years of buggy metadata and erratic organizing with NativVita, not to mention the company going belly up made me reconsider when looking at alternative hard drive based devices. A couple of sales staff recommended Roon as a platform based on my input (even though steering me away from their products- shout out to Fred’s Sound of Music and Stereotypes in PDX). Importing CD’s into a Roon Nucleus has been by far the least painless experience of this task to date. Their integration of Qobuz is also a pleasure as is Roon’s ability to inhabit Roon tested/ready devices. Basically it took years of suboptimal experiences with computer/hard drive audio me to become Roon ready

I am thirsty for new music and knowledge about artists and music I already know. I have a large collection of soundboard concert recordings not available on any streaming service. Roon & Qobuz gives me simple integration of my library with streamed library. The user experience I find is more submersive than Audirvana+, Amarra, Lumin and others I've used before. Musical discovery, credits, grouping 19 versions of Kind of Blue, etc. are all intuitive and encourage more engagement. Roon is the only software that I ever could call fun.

In the year or so I've used it, they're twice made significant improvements including just adding mobile offline access. I'm pretty happy using Roon & Qobuz. 

Cheers,

Spencer

Finding plenty of "new to me" on Qobuz without paying someone for questionable "tips." That said I mostly listen to local files, off network.

Plenty of good stuff to "discover" there.