To ROON or not to ROON ?

Your question can be answered in better knowing your streaming requirements. I can share some of the reasons Roon became a part of my streaming diet.

I used Qobuz by itself for 2.5 years before tying it into Roon. Now, I run Roon with Qobuz and Tidal libraries tied in, and I have separate subs to Spotify and YouTube as well. All these services have different use cases for me. I use YouTube for video, Spotify for remote listening, for lo-fi listening while working, and for sharing music, and I use Roon for hi-res listening.

I came to Roon when I upgraded streamers to the iFi Zen Stream. The Zen Stream didn’t have Chromecast built-in (still doesn’t), and I wanted an elegant way to get the music from my Android to the Zen Stream. Roon was the only elegant solution. When I started using Roon, I also found that I could fix the lack of library coverage Qobuz suffered from by also tying in Tidal. No system is perfect. Every streaming service will change how you listen and what you listen to. I do miss the new release curation from Qobuz being front and center. It’s possible for me to find that in Roon, but it’s more buried. Spotify’s content curation and playlists are my favorite out of any service, but Spotify doesn’t support quality source files. My workaround to getting Spotify content curation in high res is via Soundiiz, which is a service that syncs playlists across services. I sync the Spotify playlists to Tidal (which has more music coverage for the playlists that I generally like to listen to), and those synced playlists show up in the Playlists area in Roon. It’s more clunky than I’d like, but it gets the job done.

I’m also looking for ways to consolidate. If Spotify had a CD quality tier, I wouldn’t be using Roon. I didn’t find Amazon Music to be adequate, and I don’t want to use Qobuz or Tidal by themselves at this point. Apple Music may be one service that could replace Spotify and Roon for me, but iFi needs to update their streamer with Chromecast built-in.

One more element to Roon that I’m beginning to experiment with is Roon ARC. It just launched. It gives Roon remote listing abilities. It’s limited to phone apps for now. I hear that it has AirPlay support, but Chromecast and Android Auto support are missing. If Roon ARC becomes more robust, it could replace some of Spotify’s uses for me. I have attempted to share Roon with friends and family via Roon ARC, but it hasn’t taken for anyone yet. I imagine that it’s both not convenient enough, and the Amazon Music and Apple Music users are likely already satisfied with their services.

I do see benefits to hosting my own server. As long as I continue to use Roon, I’ll be playing with things that I couldn’t otherwise play with using the big streaming services. One area is upsampling at the server level (either in Roon or via HQPlayer). I will also experiment more with MQA and DSD formats (and DACs that support those formats). If I get the itch, I might also begin to build my own library of owned music, but that’s a long shot. Also, rooDial looks pretty neeto. So, Roon opens up ways to experiment or customize your music and your listening experience. If any of these things become a feature I have to have, then I’ll be married to Roon for a while longer.

Roon is wonderful, WHEN IT WORKS.  I am on my 6th year of using Roon and I've built my system around it so I am definitely a heavy user and a pretty big fan of the software.

However, while this happens with all software I'm sure, there is a pretty large group of Roon users that have a strong love/hate relationship with Roon.  That's because (1) it is not always stable/it doesn't run that well on lower end hardware even though it may fit within their system requirements; (2) the Roon team has their own strongly held design philosophy that excludes a number of use cases that will never be addressed (no folder access to a local collection); and  (3) Roon's update rollouts are often sh*t shows.  I've never had a serious issue with an update, but several have created havoc if you read their forums.

Roon also doesn't meet all of its promises - it's only a whole house audio solution if you live alone or can share a library with all inhabitants; their library management work is far from complete (try using a box set on Roon); and they seem to be focused on streamers more than local library folks these days (I know...dying breed).

I guess my point is that Roon is high reward but potentially high maintenance and possible high frustration at times.  Depends on how much control you want - i.e. J River and Foobar 2000 gave you lots of control but not a lot of sophistication.  Roon is sophisticated, but they're in the driver's seat and they always will be.

Definitely try it out. 

I use Roon with a $500 cheap DELL mini computer. I am a power user of Roon since I have 3 Zones for headphones and 2-channel, and sometimes Convolution filters (DSP) on the headphone Zone.

I helped a friend setup an audio booth at a show using Roon on a Apple laptop to 3 Zones. We created a network at the show just for the booth. This was without internet access since we did not want the participants to waste time browsing. So this was not a super powerful network. We also had some hi-res files, but no Convolution filters. The setup worked perfectly.

Roon is really solid and I love it. I was a user even before the product was released. About 7 years ago, I met the son of the PS Audio owner at a show and he was excited about a new product coming out called Roon. Based on that conversation I bought a Lifetime subscription to Roon for $450.

I wanted to be completely indifferent to Roon and was hoping to send back the cheap NUC I picked up to try it with.

There's no going back. It overcomes so many deficiencies in the ifi Zen Stream, Tidal Connect and Qobuz. Roon Radio is 95% brilliant. It also allows you the freedom to not overly care about the software of your network bridge (or directly connect to the DAC if you want to).

All I can say is, give it a try - we are all totally different and some people really like mConnect and BubbleUPnP (I dislike them both). There's a 14-day free trial and you can install Roon Server on any spare piece of computer kit, or buy a cheap NUC.

I'm already planning on getting a better, fanless NUC and a lifetime subscription - but that's just me. I'm also planning on AB testing a direct connection to my DDC instead of the Zen Stream which would bring in some additional funds to spend elsewhere (want new speakers!)

@jabbaman What do you find lacking with Tidal Connect?