I used to use Auralic products, but had performance issues with them and I didn’t like that they “phoned home” all the time and then forced updates on end users that would sometimes brick the device. I wound up blocking the device from communicating with the outside world, and then it didn’t work correctly at all times either.
So I am saying this fully realizing that Roon makes many people feel the same way.
But since I have two other DACs that I love that are discrete components, I felt like removing an expensive and proprietary commercial hardware option was a good move, allowing me flexibility. That is why I like RoPieee. It’s commodity hardware, easy to rebuild, and it does its job so incredibly well. I can tell that things are bit perfect by using one of my two DACs — RME ADI-2 — that has a bit perfect test capability built in. Test files are streamed from my Roon on NAS installation through RoPieee to the ADI-2 and the ADI-2 shows me success or failure (never had a failure.) I’m satisfied in more ways than one. I can tell you that it sounds as good as my Auralic DAC/streamer components used to, yet I could NOT be sure that those were doing bit-perfect work.
As a result of all the above, a Nucleus is not attractive to me, but that’s not to say it wouldn’t work well for others with different priorities.