After many years of CD advocacy I bought a Meridian Explorer 2 and plugged it into my Pathos Logos 2 serving Zingali 3 speakers, got Tidal account and it all sounds great. By a stroke of luck I will have about £2000.00 available in a few weeks. What could Roon do for me? (much of the talk here is way over my head.) What hardware might make solid improvement?
Thanks in advance for all suggestions!
The audio chain seems fine to me. You don’t explain how you provide Roon, it may be that you need to pay attention there if you are doing it with a laptop or an unsuitable machine. Otherwise it seems to me you have 2k to spend on a Roon compatible MQA enabled device if it is that you are after. You don’t necessarily need MQA though and dropping that as a requirement might well open up your options considerably.
Thanks Henry.
I haven’t subscribed to Roon as I don’t - as yet- fully understand what it might do for me!
I am sure I will always want MQA availability.
Here’s my personal opinion and experience, what Roon can do for someone:
You can use Roon just as a kind of streaming source to feed your DAC. Seems basic, but sending audio files is not such an easy task, as it probably looks at the first view.
If you use the DSP settings like upsampling (with a stunning increase in sound quality… And I have “old” ears 
) or the parametric equalizer to adjust the sound to your needs, you will hear many new details in your music.
You will get another insight into your collection with all the metadata, undiscovered links between artists, composers and different versions.
You can tag your music files, sort them by whatever you like. The user interface lets you view the lyrics, liner notes or images.
You can rip your CDs with an external program and import the files to an external storage (NAS, USB hard disk). I have some CDs (or different masterings of one version) in my collection, which will probably never be available within a streaming service.
Regarding the hardware: Since the Pathos looks like a very very nice amp, you should probably use a DAC with better internal goodies… and now it’s getting difficult… Which one to choose?
I started with a Bluesound Node 2 and then bought the Auralic Altair… Two worlds! The music improved from “nice, it’s playing music with some details” to “wow, i never heard that instrument so clear before”
The Roon-ready DAC has a very big influence in the chain, so you should spend some money here. You will hopefully get some more recommendations regarding the “best DAC”, but my suggestion would be:
Auralic Altair (approx. 1600 Euro) and Roon (trial and after that the lifetime subscription as long as it is still available), that will fit into your budget.
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+1 on @Oliver_Pix’s thoughts and recommendations.
I’m assuming you don’t have the digital module for your amp. Have you considered this as an alternative to the Explorer2?
Thanks for comments; I am a bit more confident now but ripping cds is somewhat beyond me at present.
What about laptops? Do they matter? Mine is a somewhat banal Toshiba.