I think what I was trying to say, was/is that streaming music over a home network has really only gained momentum in the last ten years.
Linn launched their first Klimax DS in 2007, and Lumin followed with their A1 in 2012.
I think the Sony was a product of it’s time, when music was predominantly stored/accessed on/from hard-drives. And I’m sure the Sony still sounds sublime. High-end Sony stuff just floors you - my NW-WM1Z and MDR-1ZR combo sounds as good as my rack-based Chord kit.
But back to streaming. I’m a Linn KDS/3 and Lumin A1 owner. IMO Lumin deserve a medal for how they have advanced streaming over the last few years. Although Linn may have ‘launched’ audiophile-level streaming in 2007, it is Lumin that have really advanced it since 2012.
I’m still holding out hope that Sony adds support (or Roon and Sony form a partnership). Sony doesn’t update the player often, but there was an update within the past ~4 months. Over the years they added Spotify and changed out vTuner for TuneIn. The mobile/tablet app has been updated often as well.
I’m of two minds. Sony wants you to be able to listen to the digital music you own/have locally and focus on the highest quality sound it can produce. I get that and my local files sound absolutely exquisite (truly remarkable). My other mindset is that people would like to do both stream (explore new music) and play their faves that they have locally.
Roon seems like a no-brainer, but at least adding Tidal Connect (and similar for Qobuz) seems like a very very simple software update as they did it for Spotify.