OP--There are many confusing statements in the comments to your post--and many off topic responses such as which DAC/streamer to buy or why vinyl is better or worse. Bottom line: Roon was not originally intended to add or subtract from SQ--it was purely software that organized your music library and the libraries of whichever streaming service (Tidal & later Quobuz) that you were using. Roon later added SQ features such as DSP if you wanted to use it--i never have but have heard both positive and negative--all room dependent. The software has evolved over time to overcome bugs that would cause songs to suddenly drop or files to be lost--i love Roon purely for its metadata approach. You already have Tidal so why not try Roon and see if can tell the difference between streaming directly from Tidal vs streaming Tidal through Roon--i hear absolutely no difference with my DAC. But be sure you're comparing apples to apples by implementing it the same way (ie via ethernet or USB) you do now for directly streaming Tidal.
Sound quality of Roon
I am considering trying Roon. I have been using my Bluesound Node but I am going to upgrade as I do enjoy streaming more and more using Tidal. It is quite an investment to get a NUC or Nucleus and then have a separate tablet to control it all.
But apart from the cost I have read some people say Roon does not sound good. Their streamer by blah blah sounds better. Is this true? For all that is required to use Roon, the hardware, the subscription and all, would Roon be popular if it made digital streaming sound bad?
I would love to hear people who have experience comment on this. There is info on the Roon Labs discussion site but as you can imagine it is saying this is BS Roon sounds great. I guess Roon as a software also has had updates, so maybe this is a thing that might have been true in the past?