To ROON or not to ROON ?

What I like about roon is the new music it leads me to (with a subscription to Qobuz or Tidal).  When you play an album it will offer suggestions of other albums you may like.  It can also learn your tastes by you liking or disliking songs on roon radio (plays tracks after your album is over, if you want it to).  There are other ways to explore music also.  With a million or so albums to choose from, you can find a lot of good music and you don't have to buy anything to try it.

If you know what you want to listen to many other apps will do the job.  If you like to find new music, roon is worth a try. 

@oddiofyl 

@lalitk 

My story is just about the same as you guys. I went with Bluesound first and upgraded to Aurrender. No regrets. Have found no need to use Roon. 

I’m sure all the streamer mentioned are excellent.   The U2 mini has the best selection of output types no doubt but I think I’ll be fine with either USB or SPDIF output on the Aurender 

I don’t see buying anything like an Esoteric or dcs where there are i2s and multiple ins and outs including clocks.   All I care about is some flexibility and whether the streamer or the DAC controls the clock depending on which DAC I use.  

For me when I upgraded from a Macbook Pro with Amarra (great sounding software with an iffy interface) to a Bricasti M5 I had to move on to either Roon MConnect or Audirvana.  Did trials on all three and MConnect was off the table immediately.  I really liked Roon and with all the updates to Audirvana’s interface it is really good as well.  I chose Audirvana since i like their interface format and it’s half the monthly subscription price.  Time will tell if I decide to switch to Roon at some point.   I would recommend doing the trials and have fun with it.

I also was Roon tested several years ago and found it not worthwhile. Several years of buggy metadata and erratic organizing with NativVita, not to mention the company going belly up made me reconsider when looking at alternative hard drive based devices. A couple of sales staff recommended Roon as a platform based on my input (even though steering me away from their products- shout out to Fred’s Sound of Music and Stereotypes in PDX). Importing CD’s into a Roon Nucleus has been by far the least painless experience of this task to date. Their integration of Qobuz is also a pleasure as is Roon’s ability to inhabit Roon tested/ready devices. Basically it took years of suboptimal experiences with computer/hard drive audio me to become Roon ready