Roon Nucleus

Think of it as an OS, an operating system, much like MAC OS, Linux. and Windows. Roon wants to be the audiophile OS and control everything, and as as business model this makes sense. Will it be "audiophile" grade and successful, well who knows, I suspect you will get multiple opinions. I have been using Auralic Aries Lightning DS connected to my NAS (via Minim Server) and steaming to my DAC for years, so what do I know. I listen to analog almost exclusively anyway (tape and vinyl).

I have Roon as well. The end point is a Sonic Transporter and I access the library from an iPad mini. I can say that Roon does not catalog my library to my liking and doesn't seem to recognize my compilation CDs. Not sure if it's a set up issue or something else but I got tired of figuring it out. All the extra content, tags, and feature are kind of useless to me, but i can see why others might like the. I don't think Lightning DS is the be all end all, but it catalogs my library the way I like, is easy to use, and they seem to have gotten past quality and support issues.

In comparison, I can't say one sounds better than the other, and I'm not even going to get into that discussion since digital is not that important to me. As for Roon, I can say it does take a bit to create the library, but I haven't experienced what you have. Then again my library is about 25% the size of yours. I've been pretty happy with Synology, Minim Server, and Lightning DS so I guess I'll leave well enough alone.

@audioengr - I have had my eye on the DigiOne player. Do you have any experience with wireless operation? I am interested more so in connectivity and whether there was any issue with dropouts, as a hardwired ethernet connection would be logistically difficult. My Aurilac Aries has always worked fine in wireless mode. I am also curious about set up. The instructions posted on the website seem a bit daunting but not impossible to deal with.

I never tried running Roon on my MacBook Air. I have a Sonic Transporter connected to my network that runs Roon Core. I just use the Roon App on an iPad Mini to access music on my NAS running Minim Server and stream through the Auralic Aries to my Lessloss DAC. Once I abandoned Roon I went back to using the Lightning DS app to access music on my NAS (still running Minim Server).

Per Steve Nugent's recommendation I just set up Kinsky with BubbleUPnP as a proxy to Minim Server. I can't say I notice anything different sound wise. Although the Kinsky interface is nice, Bubble UPnP does not run on my NAS like Minim Server does. I had to set it up on my Mac Mini which means I have to leave it on all the time so Bubble UPnP doesn't shut down. If I decide to stick with Kinsky, and I might as I'm contemplating replacing the Aries, I may drop Bubble UPnP from the equation.