Yes, I found those articles interesting and I agree in the concept therein described, but this all depends on the quality of your gear. I will try to describe the setup. Hope it is helpful.
I no longer have Krell 250W Class A Mono blocks and Martin Logan Prodigy, but I do have Dali speakers which I listen to in the nearfield (<1meter) and the audio quality is thus OK. (It is helpful with SoundPimp, which beyond providing the fine masked details of the recording also provides a 150 degree soundstage which is closer to reality than the +60 you get with normal stereo.)
For this setup I put an SSD into a vintage Macbook Air (1.8Ghz), and being unaware of your guidelines, however implementing a general best practice, configured another Windows10 computer as Roon core. I thus had a setup with separate core and control.
This Mac was also stripped of all redundant OS X task, like search, etc, etc. A special script is available that strips down the computer to a minimum of tasks. It is thus a machine with almost no other activity than Roon and a few other mediaplayers, for example a radio that I wrote myself (I have not yet tried the Roon variant). It is thus a dedicated machine for audio-only streaming. This is the only task.
Hence, it acted similar to an audio-qualitative Roon Bridge with a USB connected DAC, or utilizing sometimes Airplay audio when I wanted to cast to other stereo systems and was less focused on audiophile quality.
HOWEVER, I had to abandon this strategy and put the core on this Mac, for the reason that the connection between the machines in the local network was unstable. This is an equation with several unknown, here a list of some of my problems, they all were giant time thieves:
(1) A Windows10 computer was unable to contact this Mac core until I deleted the Roon files on the computer and reinstalled Roon. It could then once again see the Mac core. This was a recent problem.
(2) the Mac core cannot always see my music library (on a wireless unix harddrive; Seagate), unless I babysit and manually browse my way to that drive via Roon settings. Only then would Roon reconnect to the predefined library paths defined. This appears to be a bug in Roon because it often happens also when problem (3) is not present, i.e. when OS X do see the unit fully!
(3) For oddball security reasons, the OS X will not always see units on the network that was there âyesterdayâ in this always on network, not until I babysit and manually browse a couple of times on the network. OS X then resync as well, so that Roon can subsequently do the same.
(4) There is, or at least it was, a significant delay in the network discovery features of OS X, not even close to resembling the speed of light. (minutes of waiting).
From all this, the Mac is now defined as core and this gives me a nice setup given that it is only used for Roon and radio (and Audirvana currently for testing).
I thought the error message stated elsewhere in this thread was related to WiFi trouble, so I moved the DSD and other high resolution media to the local SSD disk. (Audirvana shows me this was unnecessary, it can play DSD over WiFi as a breeze).
I can add additionally that I tend to explore known material already available through Tidal or my local music library. There should therefore be a limit as to how much work Roon needs to do in order to keep up with metainformation. I anticipate it is there for the local library?
It is in this setting that I would very much like â occasionally â to be able to tell Roon to calm down and only play what I ask it to play. If this user need is at cross purpose the general Roon philosophy, then please give me a secret shortcut key for it. It would be much better than the alternative suggested in the linked tutorials on good sound, which is to enter Roon setting and turn off this and that feature that I want back in an hour from now. Tedious.
Such a toggle would immediately enhance my user experience with Roon.
It is suggested here and in the knowledge base to add another Roon Bridge to cure the system of CPU trouble, but honestly speaking, this is highly unnecessary in my current hifi gear setup, as I said without the Krell monsters.
Rather, I hope to have Roon up and running on improved DSD algorithms and use the core directly via USB to DAC. I am happy with that.
Conclusion: I am going to use the Mac as core until further notice, i.e. until I feel safe to move the Roon Database back to the Windows 10 machine that lost the job mostly from force majeure reasons (the missing stability of the network).
REGARDING DSD: I am unable to find any settings resembling the alternatives you mention, i.e. DSD to PCM conversion as opposed to DSD over PCM. I would like to try the latter. How can I achieve that? (The underlying system is equal for Audirvana and Roon).