To ROON or not to ROON ?

I was a late adopter of Roon, but I would not go back at this point.  Having said that, if the only digital source you have is Qobuz and you only listen on one system, then perhaps Roon isn't for you. 

If you have multiple sources, then Roon is fantastic.  I have Qobuz, Tidal, and a large collection of music on my network and 4 systems.  Roon allows me to bring all the versions of a song or album into one interface and makes it easy for me to choose which system(s) to play it on.  It's also great about making suggestions for new music I should try.  The Qobuz interface is pretty good, but Roon will take things to another level even if that's your only source of digital music.

WOW THANKS FOR ALL THE GRT RESPONSES. I THINK I'LL TRY ROON AND SEE IF I LIKE IT. IF IT BLOWS ME AWAY GUESS I'LL HAVE TO STAY AWAY FROM AURENDER. I DID TRY AN AURALIC WITH A BUILT IN DAC IN THE PAST AND HAD TROUBLE WITH IT WORKING CORRECTLY AND RETURNED IT ASAP. SINCE THEN I PURCHASED A PONTUS 2 AND HAVE ENJOYED THE SOUND. 

THX AGAIN 

Roon the software is good if you like that sort of interface. The Roon Nucleus streamer on the other hand is way over priced. IMO

I will say, excellent thread. Bringing out differences in values between the folks posting and different perspectives on external software or not. Minus the egos and hostility… outstanding. 

It would be great if all threads were like this. Everybody learns something. 
 

I am running a Roon core on my Synology NAS, playing my own library. In other words, my use-case is different than what you describe, since I am mainly interested in playing my library and not using the setup to discover new music. I do not subscribe to Qobuz and paid the one-time lifetime fee to Roon. With that said, I am very happy with Roon. The interface is not perfect, but once you get used to it, it is very easy and does a great job. I currently have 4,600 tracks in my library and am working on digitizing about 400 LPs and ripping about 300 CDs.

My basic use-case is sorting by artist, choosing an artist, choosing an album and playing from the start of the album. All of which is very easy to do. When an album is done, Roon keeps the music playing and does a really excellent job of selecting complementary tunes from my library. My wife and I are both really impressed with how good Roon is at doing this. To me, its the perfect radio station, playing all of my favorite artists and songs, and seems to sense my current "mood" well.

My setup is a Synology DS1821+ NAS Running DSM7 with 64TB HDD storage (Seagate EXOS drives), 2 SSD cache devices (Intel 670p series) and the Roon Core on a Samsung e-SATA SSD drive (850 EVO 250GB). I’ve aggregated the 4 1Gb ethernet ports to a Cisco SG200-26 switch and use a 1Gb fiber connection from the switch to a Lumin X1 DAC (in Roon only mode). The DAC outputs to a Pass Labs XP-22 preamp -> Pass Labs X150.8 Amp to YG Acoustics Hailey 2.2 speakers. In addition, I have Sonos throughout the house and will be upgrading my AVR to a NAD T778 in about two weeks which is Roon Ready. The Roon Remote controls all of this very nicely with the exception that I’ve discovered that the best way to group and ungroup Sonos devices is to pause play, group or ungroup, then resume play. If I group or ungroup while music is playing, the syncing takes a minute or two at best or the Core may get hung altogether. By pausing, grouping, playing, all seems to work OK.

Of course, Roon cannot group the Lumin and Sonos devices.

I may add a streaming service some day, but for now I’m enjoying ripping and rediscovering my library. I do have some recent adds like Snarky Puppy, Brandi Carlile and some other fill-ins that I’ve been downloading from HD-Tracks.