Roon vs Qobuz Connect

Think about how many hops the bits take before they even get to your house!

That's all irrelevant when comparing QC to Qobuz via Roon, because it applies equally to both, and TCP/IP handles all that seamlessly. 

Maybe that's an argument for comparing UPnP streams from a local server to remote streaming, but it still might not matter. Even local streaming can take multiple hops over a LAN, depending on network architecture and configuration. It's all packet data that gets resolved by the streamer/DAC NIC on the receiving end.

Audiophile1-your post doesn’t make sense. I use the same audio hardware and cables for both roon or Qobuz connections. There is no way that people are going to buy specific cables for roon and other cables for QC. I bypass my Linux roon server when using QC, but use every other piece of audio equipment. I have all the settings set as described above, Roon on a Linux (best sounding OS), with many high powered cores and 64g ram, and QC sounds better, to me, to my audio friends, but the interface is in the dark ages compared to Roon.

The last time I demoed Audirvana, it also sounded better than Roon, but again the interface can’t compete with Roon

What about the server?  Has anyone epxerienced better sonics with "better" servers?

 Has anyone experienced better sonics with "better" servers?

Not better sound, but Roon can need a pretty beefy server to reduce unreliability.  Roon server software can run tons of processes, need lots of memory, and grinds itself silly updating metadata sometimes.  A better machine can mitigate those effects. This all depends on size and nature of your Roon library, including unidentified albums and usage of lots of tags.

This is one reason I favor the 2-machine server-streamer configuration.  You can have a super beefy machine and still have a quiet endpoint serving to the DAC. 

This doesn't impact audio quality however...it is reliability...