i just decided to take the plunge (after so many friends/hifi buds urged me to do so, seemingly forever) and so will be trying roon out for the next several weeks, and i'll report back my learnings and experience after some time
my sense is it is a luxury -- a slick and well designed convenience, makes something we can do using other methods easier and done ’all in one place’, with the benefits of more handy side-info about the music (metadata, lyrics)... not quite as good as having lp album art or cd foldout for musicians on each track etc etc, (that is where blu os is quite weak... minimal zero info of that type there)
i am coming from blu os, which is really not bad and let’s one do much of the important stuff that roon lets us do more easily and more elegantly
that said, there is definitely a non trivial cost to this luxury, in the subscription and also the add’l hardware needed, so each of us has to assess whether the added expense is worth what it provides