You can just get Bluesound in every room and your issues disappear. That’s as long as you like the sound. So you need a proper demo. But listening to my Pulse 2 now, with MQA and my thought is, ‘What’s not to like?’…
Thanks Chris. I thought that part of the benefits of using Roon is that you don’t have to be tied down to one manufacturers way of doing things. But it looks like there are very few loudspeakers choices that are Roon Ready. Perhaps because Roon is still so new that it will take awhile for others to catch on. I don’t know why Naim doesn’t update their Muso and Qb speakers as Roon endpoints?
What I would say is don’t rush. Get Roon set up in one room and then add to it over time.
Get Roon Ready devices so you can group zones if you wish. Don’t buy Sonos as it doesn’t do High res. Why ever would you want to limit audio quality if you just don’t have to for similar money? You will remember quality long after you have forgotten the price.
If people already have Sonos, then it’s great that Roon have accommodated things so they do get the best from their investment.
Just my thoughts…
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None of the musos are RAAT only the new Uniti Players are Roon Ready not speakers. They all use airplay so will fit in using that, but as you mentioned hires audio might be an option at some point you wont get the advantages of this with the Musos as Airplay is limited to 48khz. The qb does sound the nuts and the Naim sound is lovely.
Worth checking out this thread, if you haven’t already seen it - Roon End point that is neat, compact and fuss free? - it covers many of the speaker ideas discussed here.
Fwiw I would emphasise comments made elsewhere about auditioning. For example, I loved the sound of the Naim Muso when I heard it but very quickly found myself missing the stereo separation of two physical speakers - similarly with the Bluesound Flex and Mini - this informed my subsequent choices. Of course, you may feel completely differently - trial as much as you can to see what suits 
Roon Nucleus is a good value for those not inclined to home brew computers. If you do elect to go the home brew route, you can do what I’ve done and home-brew a media server. The trick is to use FreeNAS from iX systems (they sell a nice TrueNAS small office server if you don’t home-brew) and add Roon core in a virtual environment running on top of FreeNAS/TrueNAS.
Fearing just what happened to you and having a similar number of disks, I moved my iTune library media to the FreeNAS server. It exports that file system as a CIFS share for the Mac. It also runs management software for the home net, stores my photos, and runs Plex and Roon servers for audio. Either offer good sound.
The advantage of going the FreeNAS route is that you have a known bullet-proof file system, OpenZFS. OpenZFS combines data redundancy and recovery, virtual volumes of multiple physical devices, robust file system services for AFS, CIFS, and NFS. It is best to configure for dual disk redundancy, RAIDZ2, as second disk failures during data recovery are distressingly common events. Especially with disks the same age, hours, design life and build quality. OpenZFS will support rebuilds with larger replacement disks but size is based on the smaller disks present.
OpenZFS is a copy on write file system that is next to impossible to break. OpenZFS supports snapshots and volume replication making backup to an extra disk easy (just in case). System volume and data volumes are separate. The data volumes contain sufficient configuration information so that they can be moved to new hardware as a set without incident. No need to put them on the same device channels.
A thumb drive is the OS boot media. The OS snapshots the OS volume into boot environments. Restoring to an earlier version of the OS should an update go wrong is by restoration of the earlier boot environment as the active one.
OpenZFS supports volume replication to external or remote media makeing it easy to continually maintain a single big volume that serves as a bug out volume if you are forced to evacuate by fire or flooding. OpenZFS also does a periodic check of the volume for in place bit rot.
FreeNAS runs on modest hardware but it should be server class (Xeon) with ECC and you should spend extra for ECC as the file system must run continuously without errors. You should also be careful to use file server rated disk drives rather than desktop/gamer drives. A fast Ethernet interface is important and Ethernet is usually the performance bottleneck.
I’ve looked at many alternative music servers. I’ve been sick of iTunes for years because of its clunky architecture so I migrated to Plex, then to Roon. For the cost conscious, Plex to Google Audio Chrome Cast optically connected to a high quality DAC is a good budget alternative. For the less constrained budget, Roon plus Tidal is a good choice. I use Tidal to play older music that is at Tidal but out of print, to explore artists I’ve heard on Live from Here, and to evaluate recordings for addition to my purchased collection. The Roon artist, album, and other reviews and Roon Radio were the deciders for me. Roon Radio is like iTunes Genius. It plays things similar to an example playlist that are in your library. It is a good way to rediscover music you forgot you had.
Recently, I subscribed to Tidal because Tidal offers original FLAC lossless and pays artists several times what Apple, Amazon, Google, and the other streaming services do. Still too little but better. I can’t hear a significant difference between my local copies and Tidal FLAC streams. I also found a number of out of print recordings in the Tidal Archives. Things I have on LP but not digital. Things like Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” and “Curlew River” that have found limited play but are noteworthy. Sadly, the original recording of the Bernstein Mass is unavailable but a more recent one that is in print is.
Roon will play to AirPlay devices including Apple Home Pod. At louder levels, Home Pod is voiced similarly to my Dhalquist DQ-10s and lower levels it sounds tubby as Apple loudness compensates the bass, so very '60s but tube sound rather than the transistor brittleness of that era.
You can make stereo pairs from Bluesound devices…
Sure, but that’s quite expensive when compared with other options. My point was intended as a more general one - that you may find there’s things that are important to you that you hadn’t realised…well, that was the case for me anyway.
Yes, I was just saying that it’s possible. So you have building blocks to expand as you wish this way.
In the finish, we all have to do our own demos and choose for ourselves.
Thank you olchon for your advice. My main listening room is my bedroom. We are pinched for space here in NYC. Still, my apartment is small enough that I would like to stream music reliably throughout the rest of the apartment. Imagine, candles burning, in the middle of a snow storm listening to Mozart’s Requiem throughout the whole apartment.
Audition time, Bluesound would sound lovely though, in Hi Res…
Hi Chris, Yes, it is time for me to audition Bluesound speakers. I’m sure they will sound great. I was quite happy when I auditioned two Sonos Play 5’s in stereo mode so I’m sure I will be happy with the Pulse 2’s as well. I just thought, at this point, I would not have such limited choices of speakers to stream music. I guess Roon is still too new and a couple of years from now there will be more speakers to choose from.
Too much choice is not always a good thing. Lol
By the way, I have a 2013 iPad that I have never used before. It’s practically brand-new and I want to use it to have the Roon app on it only. Is this model too old or will it work?
Go to the App Store and download it. 2 chances lol
Roon will run on any iPad from the original Air and mini 2 models upwards. Both were introduced in October 2013. If it is an older model, it’s well eh… too old.
Be sure to upgrade iOS11 before downloading/installing Roon Remote.
My iPad is iOS9.3.5. Apparently my software is up to date?
IOS 11.3.1 is what I have
Dang. My iPad is from 2012. I tried downloading. “Roon Remote” is not compatible with this iPad. Doh! Got to buy another iPad. : (
Must be an older ipad that can’t be updated to iOS11. I have a 2nd generation iPad that can’t be updated past iOS 9.x I believe.
(capable ipads are: iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad (2017), iPad (2018), iPad Mini 2, iPad Mini 3, iPad Mini 4, iPad Pro)