Does Roon play Tidal in the same quality as the Tidal player itself?

That could happen, since sometimes there’s no Red Book–quality FLAC available, just AAC, but it would show in your Roon signal path as not bit perfect. I streamed an album like this just a little while ago, and it showed as an orange dot rather than the purplish bit-perfect “star.”

I go with the “different master” theory.