To ROON or not to ROON ?

Roon is wonderful, WHEN IT WORKS.  I am on my 6th year of using Roon and I've built my system around it so I am definitely a heavy user and a pretty big fan of the software.

However, while this happens with all software I'm sure, there is a pretty large group of Roon users that have a strong love/hate relationship with Roon.  That's because (1) it is not always stable/it doesn't run that well on lower end hardware even though it may fit within their system requirements; (2) the Roon team has their own strongly held design philosophy that excludes a number of use cases that will never be addressed (no folder access to a local collection); and  (3) Roon's update rollouts are often sh*t shows.  I've never had a serious issue with an update, but several have created havoc if you read their forums.

Roon also doesn't meet all of its promises - it's only a whole house audio solution if you live alone or can share a library with all inhabitants; their library management work is far from complete (try using a box set on Roon); and they seem to be focused on streamers more than local library folks these days (I know...dying breed).

I guess my point is that Roon is high reward but potentially high maintenance and possible high frustration at times.  Depends on how much control you want - i.e. J River and Foobar 2000 gave you lots of control but not a lot of sophistication.  Roon is sophisticated, but they're in the driver's seat and they always will be.

Definitely try it out. 

I use Roon with a $500 cheap DELL mini computer. I am a power user of Roon since I have 3 Zones for headphones and 2-channel, and sometimes Convolution filters (DSP) on the headphone Zone.

I helped a friend setup an audio booth at a show using Roon on a Apple laptop to 3 Zones. We created a network at the show just for the booth. This was without internet access since we did not want the participants to waste time browsing. So this was not a super powerful network. We also had some hi-res files, but no Convolution filters. The setup worked perfectly.

Roon is really solid and I love it. I was a user even before the product was released. About 7 years ago, I met the son of the PS Audio owner at a show and he was excited about a new product coming out called Roon. Based on that conversation I bought a Lifetime subscription to Roon for $450.

I wanted to be completely indifferent to Roon and was hoping to send back the cheap NUC I picked up to try it with.

There's no going back. It overcomes so many deficiencies in the ifi Zen Stream, Tidal Connect and Qobuz. Roon Radio is 95% brilliant. It also allows you the freedom to not overly care about the software of your network bridge (or directly connect to the DAC if you want to).

All I can say is, give it a try - we are all totally different and some people really like mConnect and BubbleUPnP (I dislike them both). There's a 14-day free trial and you can install Roon Server on any spare piece of computer kit, or buy a cheap NUC.

I'm already planning on getting a better, fanless NUC and a lifetime subscription - but that's just me. I'm also planning on AB testing a direct connection to my DDC instead of the Zen Stream which would bring in some additional funds to spend elsewhere (want new speakers!)

@jabbaman What do you find lacking with Tidal Connect?

Roon + Qobuz = Pandora’s box with a lovely interface.