Current quality of Rune

I have to throw my hat in the ring of Roon fans.  I think that it is excellent.  Great interface, works perfectly, randomly plays new music consistent with what I was listening to and have through that discovered new music and artists!  It is stellar. I also like the writeups about the albums and have actually learned things about music that I have listened to for years! I bought a lifetime plan when it first came out and that has been a great purchase.  However, as @phishhhhh4 pointed out, their tech support is below subpar.  if you have a problem, you must post it on their community forum.  To Roon’s credit, they do actually respond to those support posts, but it is cumbersome to post a problem, wait for a response, then respond to that, wait again, etc.  Luckily, I have been able to troubleshoot any issues myself.  The one thing about Roon that really is glitchy is their ARC app, which supposedly lets you stream to your iPhone when you are away from your network.  It is useless.  It works maybe 25% of the time, if that.  Most of the time it can’t connect.  it is perplexing that a free program like Plex, for example, has no problem connecting to the home server, but Roon can’t figure it out.  So I usually use Plex outside of the home.  But other than that, I can’t imagine another way to manage my music.

I run Roon on an old M1 MacMini to an Innuos Pulsar as a Roon endpoint. So much better than the MacMini straight into the DAC. I get all the Roon features and audio quality of a dedicated streamer.

@sls883 

As long as your streaming has sufficient speed and memory resources, Roon doesn't really have a "sound quality" per se unless you are using its dsp features which i don't.  More depends on whether you are using Tidal or Quobuz as they provide the sound quality.  Although its signal processing features have been added, Roon's original goal was to just pass that through without messing with the stream, and just organize Tidal and Quobuz into a great library interface--IMO it's the best interface i've used but as someone mentioned if you need support it's a PITA.  However, most support issues can be found on its support pages once you get the hang of searching.  Remember--you have to subscribe to either Tidal or Quobuz or both--that's where the music comes from--not Roon.

Thank you @moto_man 

Their support model is atrocious

Yes they will respond to a post needing help 

You get a response in like 3 days and it's usually ..."please reboot Roon"

When that doesn't fix the problem you post again and wait another 4 days for a response .

In my experience you don't get to a person who truly knows Roon and can help you until weeks into the process

The people you get initially really don't know much

Great product if it works

The worst customer support for a paid product ever if it does not

They screwed me over 

I live to reveal the truth about who they really are 

@phishhhhh4  How did Roon "screw you over " ? 

While their support model is a pain if you're looking for something instant, i've never seen them "screw over" anyone who asks them a question. They always respond and try to help and i've never seen actual Roon Technical Support personnel just say "reboot Roon" although i've seen other forum members suggest that even though it's always the first obvious step.  It's just that it can be a lot of back and forth until a problem is solved but i've always been able to find an answer on the forum anyway without the need for Roon's Technical Support.

While i love Roon most of the time i'm with @moto_man on ARC--it's useless so i just stream directly from Tidal when i'm away from home