What exactly is ROON?

THANKS TO EVERYONE.  LOTS OF USEFUL AND THOUGHTFUL INFORMATION.

@oberoniaomnia

I am sorry you had an issue with Audiovana playlists. I also had an issue with their playlist and posted my issue on the Community Audiovana forum. please see link below. I received their response in about 24 hours and was told what I needed to. In my case, it was my error, and, everything is working now. I used the Audiovana community forum several times and promptly received a very useful response. I hope this helps.

https://community.audirvana.com

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Want to add a couple of things. 

Roon is a split software system, with the core and end points.  The core is a little CPU and storage heavy.  This is partly because they index your music and add a lot of metadata to seamlessly blend music you own and music from streaming services.  The other part is that the core can do a lot.  It can do transcoding from one PCM resolution to another or DSD to PCM, and vice versa, so no matter what the limitations of your DAC, or your preferred data encoding method it will work.  The other thing that consumes CPU is the built in EQ via DSP capabilities.  Those are pretty amazingly thorough, to the point of users investing an enormous amount of time to do Dirac Live like convolutions. 

If you aren't fully utilizing the DSP or transcoding capabilities the CPU needs are quite lite.  Unfortunately (I think) this is still keeping Roon from embracing low power, high efficiency ARM based chips and mini servers.

My point is, I think the CPU needs of Roon are a little exaggerated.  You get a lot of convenience in integrating your music with streaming services and a great UI on most devices (Web, iPhone, Android) and as a subscription I never worry that it will be outdated like say, a TV that can't play Netflix anymore.

I was a little skeptical when I became a Roon  user but now I would hate to be without it. Rather than add complexity, I think it adds simplicity in managing your music.
I don’t use the DSP features, but I know many who do and are quite happy with the performance. I have a high-quality dac With its own music management app, which is very good and going back-and-forth, there is no difference in the sound quality. For me, it greatly enhances the listening experience, and I think most who have tried it have found that to be true.  As with most things in this hobby, I suppose that’s subjective so your experience might be different. Roon has helped me discover artists I enjoy very much and would likely never have found otherwise. For me, that’s the greatest benefit.

I used Audirvana with a PC before I started buying dedicated streamers.  It was an excellent and inexpensive product.  There were a few bugs that may have been fixed in the years since I used it