Lumin U2 or Aurender N200

So if you don’t like conductor you can use Roon, albeit the sound quality is degraded slightly (as with most Roon ready streamers).

@audphile1 For me that slightly has been a smaller and smaller slightly over the past year. I am going to say it might even be a dead heat now, not better not worse, just a different sound. Maybe I just don't care enough anymore as my brain keeps telling me "a little more air, less bloom, but I have to use that #$@ UI!" Not surprisingly I am using Roon about 95% of the time. That is squeeze for me, not conductor though, I have read conductor is much nicer to use. 

I have transitioned to ROON so I am using ACS for storage, library management and ripping. ROON now has a capability to show your folders, so I see mirror image of my ACS folders in my ROON app.

@lalitk what are your impressions between software choices?

@audphile1

I satisfied my curiosity about the full Nordost loom and as in the past mixing and matching works out better for me.

Right on the heels of the other "full loom or mix" cable thread, I was as curious as you on what the Nordost full loom would bring to your system. Again, with a different set of speakers your result may have been completely different. Always good to read your experiences, keep them coming!

At what point are we "done"? Hopefully never part of the joy of this hobby.

So would you say as far as the high frequencies are concerned, air and extension, between Tyr2 and Front Row speaker cables are more similar than different?

@fthompson251 Are you still happy with your Fidelium's, or are curious to try the Front Row speaker cables? 

@mclinnguy thank you! I’ll chime in with my updates after I try the FrontRow USB.

As to Roon…

From what I tried as far as UI/UX goes…Roon UI is the best there is. Conductor comes very close. Auralic Lightning DS is great too. Lumin is just not good.
I haven’t seen Squeeze.

As far as sound…Roon is good but Conductor sounds more open and musically engaging. I’m exaggerating slightly but Roon sounds dull in comparison. It’s just meh…

Same experience with Auralic where the LDS software sounded much better.
Lumin gave me no choice so I had to use Roon and it was closer in sound between native app and Roon but that’s not to say it sounded amazing. It was ok.

In the case of Aurender a large internal cache is being leveraged as part of Aurender Conductor processing. All of this processing is bypassed when you use roon. All of the proprietary processing in pretty much any streamer will be bypassed when used as a Roon endpoint. The difference will vary from I’m ok with it to f… it I’m ditching Roon

I believe that in order to get the best out of Roon you have to get a top notch all in one Roon Core streamer like the Grimm MU1 or Merging Tech. Everything else not designed with Roon as a primary objective will sound best with its own software and processing. It’s the degree of degradation that will vary. May be I’m completely off track here but that’s my take on it.

I'm using a DH Labs Mirage USB cable with my N200. Very good results.