PS this includes Tidal.....
To be clear (for my sake), Roon can integrate Tidal into/with your collection... correct? I'm assuming there is no special "deal" that provides Tidal for free to users... even for a year.
Do you already have a tablet that has the ability to run Roon remote software on? If not include that as cost for the Roon. If I remember correctly you have lms setup already. If yes, look at picore as the software to run on the rpi. You can set it up as lms server also. I am using to with allo piano and i find it more stable compared to Volumio or Moode. Both of those are constantly being updated to add new features with potential for headache.
With h picore you have the ability to use tidal if you want
I have an old iPad 2 that is a dog (eventually will be replaced). I do have iPhone 6s+'s... I'm assuming that has enough horsepower, although the small real estate is likely not ideal. BTW... how do you like the Piano? Did you pick up the Kali as well?
I used to have lms when I had an SB3, but I had sold that off a while back. Closes thing to lms running on my computer is Plex which admittedly, I'm not taking advantage of (most of the channels I would like to use simply won't play for some reason that I cannot figure out why - another story).
I know "we" had this discussion earlier, but it didn't sink in until late last night.
Roon is "similar" to LMS or Plex where server SW runs on your PC, and then the Roon bridge is installed on your endpoints... Roon remote accesses he bridge controlling which SW to play on the endpoint.
Volumio, Moode, RuneAudio (I was getting confused between Rune and Roon for a while) are installed on the endpoint, in essence making it a headless DAP that would manage the collections locally on the endpoint which would seem to me not ideal.Maybe the RPI3 has enough horsepower, but I suspect that's why Roon appears more "peppy" than Volumio, Moode, etc as the collection management is done on the PC.
I don't have a separate NAS, so I would still need to have my PC (where my collection resides) running at all time regardless of the solution I choose.
Is my understanding "close enough" to being accurate?
FWIW, Volumio reportedly has integration with Spotify and Tidal now... as well as supports DSD, and will upsample as well.
You can try my RPI3 for a spin if you want, I'm not using it at the moment. It think it has latest Moode 3.7? on the SD card now, or use your own card to try whatever you want.
That's a generous offer Rich... I appreciate it. I'll still go ahead and grab one. I've been meaning to do so for some time to play around a bit.
I gave up on RPI because I found the softwares (Volumio and Moode) to be too buggy for my extremely limited tolerance. There are others to try, but I prefer listening to music than dicking around with IT stuff. Mostly just to save money. I decided it wasn't worth it, ymmv.
Your's and Deepak's comments have probably hit the nail on the head... one value of Roon over the others headless DAP options is code stability.