I absolutely hate iTunes. Despise it. I would normally recommend anyone move away from it…
Playing music on your iDevices is important so until Roon implements the ability to do it I would stay with your current solution. Unfortunately the music playback on iDevices is currently out of the hands of the Roon team so there is no concrete when or if it will be fixed and implemented.
Where do you anticipate time and effort to get Roon customised the way you want it?
MANY of the albums are specific audiophile or foreign editions, with matching art and info that Roon didn’t seem to capture well on first pass.
Also, I would take advantage of the ability to include liner notes- the pdf’s of which are currently not bundled in the same directory …
TBH there’s no one that could give you a definitive answer to this. Life’s uncertain. As an educated guess I’d say it’s incredibly unlikely Roon wouldn’t be here in two years, but… we could all be wiped out by an asteroid in that period, who knows what’s coming… 
The more important question is would you enjoy your two years out of it, bearing in mind the time investment you put in. In my case, it’s very much a yes.
The idevices may be more of an issue for you. Certainly you’d probably want iTunes running alongside for that purpose until the iOS playback situ is resolved. Many of us just keep out iTunes structure in place for this purpose, but to be honest I’m so lazy I rarely put music on my phone now and default to Tidal on the move. I do hope that changes in the future
I know Roon isn’t going to make a promise with regard to iOS playback … but I guess my question is, the general sense here is it’s going to happen sooner or later? Both local network and remotely streaming?
As I said they want to do it but an issue in their development framework of choice prevents it. When or even if this will be fixed is completely out of their hands.
No guarantees in life or on the internet.
But … I recently left iTunes and Pure Music … now on ROON and
a lifetime subscription … cannot tell you how easy the transition was
from iTunes … it is a watched folder and everything came across …
a couple of albums split but found a way to recombine them.
NEVER had an interest in streaming music and now I use Tidal
as a trial for all those albums that might be good enough …
The metadata and ability to jump from one performer to another who
appeared on an album is unreal …
Custom artwork may take some time but as you have found the majority of the files
making it work should be easy at this point.
Did I mention getting rid of Apple’s ridiculously low streaming settings with Airplay?
After committing I spent 12 hours pulling Cat 6 cable through my attic to my main stereo
in the living room … the difference in sound quality was that big.
I now have multiple sites in the house to stream with ROON … it recognizes them all and
plays at the peak resolution of each DAC or end device. DSF files sound better than I ever heard
them on Pure Music …
Chord Mojo … Apogee Duet … OPPO 105 D … Spectral and Chord pre and amp … cannot imagine
going back.
The interface is great and very easy to work with.
I made the transition immediately prior to 1.3 and have been pleased that I have had very few issues with
the upgrade.
If you keep the files in iTunes as a watched folder if you decide to leave ROON you have only lost the time
and initial expense in setting up. Should be possible to return … not sure I would want to face that.
Personally I download high-resolution files on the iPhone and use Kaisertone to output to the Chord Mojo …
it rivals my home system for sound quality. Not sure I would give that up to stream to the device … as the battery
life is a bit limited anyway. Better on airplane mode playing through the DAC.
This is my first post … I usually do not comment but I do feel this is a great software and it answers the majority of
my desires and needs.
Bob
I switched from iTunes to Roon about 6months ago. Very easy, not regretted for one minute.
About 6,500 CDs - 80% of which were identified in Roon - many of those not identified were live recordings which I wouldn’t have expected Roon to recognise anyway (including some box sets which I had split into individual CDs so that they could be ordered by date of performance. Tagged them as UID_LIVE so that I could filter them out and then look at other albums that were not identified initially.
I still use iTunes to rip data from CDs and/or set tags on downloaded purchases. Main reasons for this are (a) I know iTunes well (b) I use utilities (Dog Scripts) to consistently name files (Album Artist - Album - Disc - Track - Song). I then copy processed files into a Roon watched folder.
Tags that can be set in Roon far surpass iTunes (e.g. recording date as well as original and actual issue dates).
I did think, initially, that it would be useful to still have iTunes library as a ‘fallback’. Whilst I could still do that I’ve never needed to do so and can’t see that I ever will.
Pretty sure itunes will survive the asteroid strike. 
Quite similar to a cockroach. 
And about as pleasant!
You can set Roon to use your metadata rather than what it retrieves.
True, but in my case some of the pertinent info is noted as free text in the comment field - which I would need to modify in order for Roon to access it …
How’d you leverage it in iTunes? Is the info variable iro its meaning/ context or does it pertain to the same topic across all files?
I didn’t - there was no way for iTunes to display that sort of info, so I entered it in the comment field of the tag (as an example, for a particular Genesis album, I have “1986 Japanese Charisma ‘Black Triangle’ release (28VD-1030-31)” listed in the comment field). The best I could do in iTunes was make sure the appropriate cover art was displayed for this specific release. Part of the appeal of Roon is a better visual/informational experience - but to accomplish that I’d need to sort the info in the comment field into the specific fields on the tag (from the example above: release year - 1986, release country - japan, etc etc etc). On first pass, I found Roon didn’t do a great job with some of the more “obscure” releases/versions. I may be willing to put in the effort, but that is part of the debate I was thinking about, as to will it ultimately worth my time?
Agreed. Without Tidal integration with Roon, the OP’s issue would be my issue and a deal-breaker. Having some sort of sync across my devices at home and away has become incredibly important to me. Like eating and sleeping. 
I’m so confident in the Roon+Tidal combo that I am painstakingly going through all of my iTunes albums and tracks and finding the matching albums and tracks in Tidal. I’m also painstakingly tagging and rating all those new Tidal tracks to match my ratings in iTunes: 1-star tracks in iTunes get a 1-STAR tag in Roon, and so on all the way up to 5-STAR. I’m also grouping my 4- and 5-STAR tags as “favorites” in Roon and “banning” my 1- and 2-STAR tracks. My 3-star tracks from iTunes are neither favorited nor banned.
This was my thinking when I subscribed to Roon about a year-and-a-half ago. iTunes and Roon coexist very well on my system. (iMac remote & MacMini Core) They often are running - but not playing - at the same time.
When I rip a CD I add it to the iTunes library. If it doesn’t display correctly in iTunes, it probably won’t in Roon. This is particularly true in compilation/soundtrack albums and albums with a number of artists contributing to the main artist.
Roon doesn’t edit our libraries in any way. Therefore, I am very comfortable using both and plan to for the foreseeable future. iTunes is a pretty good metadata editor and it has features Roon may not ever have. It is also a handy, widely-used player that often makes troubleshooting a player/dac setup easier.
I suggest continuing doing what you’re doing using iTunes. Use Roon to listen and read about artists and albums. There is no rule that one should supercede the other.
Good luck.
Use a tag editor to copy your comments tag to a tag called release and force a rescan of the albums.
Just remember, if you partake in the technology…you are helping it grow and stick round. Wondering if it will be around forever will not help a technology be around forever…partaking in that technology will help it have staying power.