Streamer question

"ROON is flakey" maybe a result of ROON updates and the CORE not being rebooted. Are you able to reboot the CORE? This is not as much of an issue these days as in the distant past.

I use a $500 DELL under my bed without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor attached. I just RDP into the machine in the rare times I need to reboot. Does your SSD have an OS?

My DELL is setup to start at 7AM and shutdown at 2:30AM every day. I have 3 of the Sonore OpticalRendu streamers hooked up to my DACs via USB. I use USB because they are the best connection on the 3 DACs I use. 

This setup also uses PowerLine adapters to send the bits to various rooms in the house. System works flawlessly for about a decade now. I used to do some very complex ROON streaming with Convolution Filters, speaker balance adjustment, etc. I use a simpler system now but that complex setup ran fine on my super cheap and low powered DELL. 

I can get away with using a noisy and cheap DELL because I use fibre just before the DAC with the OpticalRendu's. An ideal setup would be to have fibre input in the DACs, but the only DAC I owned that supported that was the Lumin X1 (now sold).

I appreciate the feedback. Again, Roon ran fine for years until my library reached a certain size. And there are occasions it will be trouble free for months. But then it will act up again.

I don't know if the SSD reboots or not. I assume when it's powered down it reboots on startup, but I'm not tech savvy. :-(

Roon is flaky for me and sometimes I find it's not worth the hassle of dealing with, so I'd like to option to simplify things and stream directly from Tidal.

I recall reading problems years ago for people with large libraries, I poked around a bit and found this from 2 years ago from a long-standing Roon employee:

"300k (tracks) is fine so long as you run the core on reasonably performant hardware with adequate RAM. Lots of people have libraries in that size range.

Assuming adequate hardware, 500k is where I think most people would start feeling some performance issues, but we have people with much larger libraries than that who seem to be happy too."

So maybe your computer has ran beyond its capability?

Anyway, my Roon ready (certified) "streaming device" provides its signal to my DAC without a USB, and can hold 12TB of music internally, and can control an attached NAS(s)- personally I don't use one.  Roon works perfectly with no glitches. Other player apps to stream Qobuz/Tidal work flawlessly too, they just are not as "nice". 

Is that what you are looking for? 

You are just thinking about "simplifying things" any trying a different app for Tidal because Roon at times doesn't work then? I think most most mid-upper level streamers do the same things as what I mentioned above- Maybe some of the budget streamers too? 

The question is what is your budget? In theory, the higher priced streamers sound better, in my experience they do, but if you are just looking for "easy reliable function" pay less. 

Thanks! I'll research what you're speaking of.

@mclinnguy 

I have just over 125000 tracks

After 1.5 yrs of problems Roon tech support informed me Room could not handle my library of flac files on my NAS

It was how I organized them in files that was the issue

Roon doesn't really make this stuff known and their customer support model for dealing with such challenges is just plain terrible (*see the 1.5 yes it took them to tell me this).

They then would not refund my $$$ for the subscription nor allow me to return the nucleus + I purchased (with additional memory installed @ their advice ). They told me Room was working as advertised and the problem was my library 

Innuos Sense has zero issues with the very same library 

And support is prompt and competent when you need it.