To ROON or not to ROON ?

Roon by itself does nothing for sound quality versus streaming direct to say Qobuz or Tidal. If you have lots of music to organize it could be helpful. I use it to stream directly to HqPlayer so I can upsample everything to DSD. 

How about PlexAmp... seems interesting

A week ago I started to consider buying an Aurender to replace my NUC/Roon setup.  It turned out to b an easy decision.  The sound quality of the Aurender blows away the Roon setup.  More detail and a richer overall sound.  

I actually think Roon's sound quality has worsened over the last few years.  I have also had an increasing number of connectivity issues.  It may be the result of so many processes going on within the software itself.  I look forward to the simplicity of the Conductor app.

You “have to Roon”. I have discovered so much new snd interesting music. Using both Tidal and Qobuz as well as a NAS.  Great high res music throughout the house and what a difference it makes. 
 

go for it and let us know how you make out!!

If I was to go back to a dedicated server (which I’m not), the best software and sound came from the Auralic Lightning DS, Lumin, and then Aurender. The best software on your own hardware is Roon, Audirvana, Pure Music. 
Not only does Roon sound the best, the user interface is a joy to use, very easy to integrate your ripped music with your streaming music, and I have found hundreds of new music because of Roon with its “if you like this artist, you will probably like these artists”. I have hundreds of thousands tracks of music and can navigate thru these with ease