Sound quality of Roon

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.

One hears the sound of Roon when using Innuos gear vs the Innuos Sense software. Roon sounds different vs Sense on Innuos gear. Obvious and easily heard with a resolving system.

My digital front end consists of: Innuos Zenith 3... - Tron Atlantic Signature dac. 

But that is not a fair test.  The Innuous software is developed to run and feed right to the DAC; it's far more lightweight than Roon.  Roon drives your gear like a stock car driver and is very resource-heavy.  Their solution is to isolate that by feeding the pure PCM stream over the network to a different endpoint that is doing nothing but streaming the data. 

I understand you can A/B Roon on these single server/streamer combo units.  What I'm saying is that since it's not the way Roon recommends using their software, if you want a fair scientific comparison, you gotta stream to a separate, very quiet endpoint. 

It might still sound worse.  But that's the fair test.

We agree. I purchased Innuos as a one box solution. It rips, stores, streams and is both the Roon core and endpoint. When used as intended, Sense simply sounds better in my system. That is all I am sharing. This is intended to help those who own Innuos or are thinking of buying Innuos. I found no sonic gains with my Innuos by housing Roon core on another computer. However, I don’t use DSP and have an NOS dac. I am not taxing the Innuos with my use of Roon and that may be why housing Roon elsewhere on my network had no sonic benefit.

I understand we each have unique digital front ends, systems, ears and preferences. No broad brush realities for all is possible in this passion/hobby. I simply share my findings and hope it can help others with “similar” set ups experiment for themselves.

@grannyring , I know I am the outlier with my experience but the way you describe Sense over Roon is precisely the inverse of what I hear on my system.  Roon is far more nuanced and detailed and Sense sounds flat by comparison.  I have the Zenith 3, Innuos PhoenixUSB reclocker (feeding my Diablo 300 GRYPHON DAC module), and also a PhoenixNET isolation switch.  If there is a way to make Sense sound better than Roon, I’d love to figure that out!

Ha! Do you use your Innuos as both core and end point? I also use Roon Squeezelite experimental mode for best sound out of Roon.