Aurender vs Roon

I’ve been testing Roon running on an older MacBook vs Aurender N100SC into the same DAC (Weiss 501). Absolutely same network, Ethernet cable, and switch.

When playing songs through Qobuz the two sources have distinctly different SQ. Roon warmer and a bit less dynamic than the Aurender which is cleaner, dryer, and possibly slightly better sound stage. Ultimately the Aurender is better strictly from a SQ perspective—Roon is superior for the interface.
 

This is in the 5% difference space, but definitely different. 

I assume the Aurender is partly better because of a linear power supply and being dedicated hifi computer.

Question: is there a way through hardware to bring Roon server closer to Aurender or is there software processing going on here that is mostly responsible for the SQ difference?