I just thought I’d share my journey, in case it’s of use to new others, particularly mac users and digital, read ‘net reviews’ endlessly and obsessively fan boys.
In short, I couldn’t get roon to be stable. Liked it, but the drop outs and frustrations of set up descriptions for a non-techy to get effective support was frustrating. I couldn’t understand why I had to have a core and then lots of wires to get it to work well.
What got me to stable roon?
Getting rid of Airport Express and swapping to a mesh router for the house (I was always a long way from the actual router) - bingo, roon as I imagined it to be. Very happy.
I’ve also been an idiot in other ways. I bought boxes and cables and boxes and cables, and more. Chase, chase. But my cds were ripped 10 years ago when I couldn’t afford hard drive space for lossless, so the quality isn’t there, so it’s Tidal only. I’ve sold the vortexbox nova, the s/h sms-200 with the power supply, the switches, routers and extra cables - usb, ethernet, optical, I’ve sold the replacement sms-200 Ultra with new power supply and USB regenerator.
What have I got?
Roon on my macbook pro, Kef ls50 wireless on s/h stands and some good s/h power leads and that’s it. The sound is something seriously special and I finally like roon in the way I wanted to from the start. Mission over.