I see it from time to time about software services. Some people complain it costs too much. In this world, there’s always people who complain about charging money for product and services they think it should be free and some who tip for satisfying services. But software often get on the bad side in community filled with zealots.
Very much a politicians answer!
Politician? I’m just sharing what I found from my experience. 
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Sounds less of a shootout and more of a drive-by.
Would you like to share you opinion on underclocking and undervolting CPU, and fanless build, for audio SQ? Thanks. (A certain Roon Core partner also underclocks the CPU.)
Undervolting is good for high power processor, reduce interference that caused from high power processing unit. Fanless is good for no fan = no vibration but using water liquid pipe would defeat its purposes so heatsink is recommended.
You are a windows guy that plays with Linux. In my 40+ years of building mainframes/Unix/Linux Enterprise servers that ran in the millions of $$$, windows can’t compete against these platforms in sheer performance.
We are talking audio here so you don’t need a large server unless you are running windows because of its inefficiencies.
You talk about needing a large server to perform upsampling. How come my PS Audio DS dac (which is FPGA based) does all the upsampling and conversion needed in software and it doesn’t need a large server to perform this work.
If you want to destroy SQ, use USB, which most music server setups use today, very few use the better I2S/Ethernet connection. So you build this big server doing all of this audio work claiming that it performs magic and you output it thru USB. Doesn’t make sense.
Like I mentioned before, I don’t need any upsampling or any processing done before the dac. I Read/stream a file and pass it to the dac thru fiber/Ethernet to the dac and let the DS dac do its job. Pretty simple.
Well, perhaps you might right on your cases from experience with computer audio journey you have. Thanks for sharing and have a nice day.
Regards,
Keetakawee
P.S. Since you mentioned PS Audio, this might interests you.
If this is anything to go by, then I think there is a market for audiophile RAM and audiophile SSDs.
To go with those really expensive audiophile ethernet and USB cables 
They already built some years back.
What is the kit pathway from server to DAC please?
I use USB into my DAC because I have little other practical choice, so I’d be intrigued how you manage it
I concur entirely with your Linux views. For any given hardware Linux spanks Windows every time in performance terms
Gasman- I got rid of USB years ago. I have a later version powerful iMac with 24G running Roon in my office. I have the PS Audio DS dac with network card installed which uses a wired Ethernet connection using cat7 cable. The iMac backs up the data disk and is used to do all the ripping of cds. Roon does a fantastic presenting all my ripped/purchased music along with my added Tidal entries.
Of course, I forgot the PS DACs have a cool network bridge attached
Cheers
Everything I understand about dual PC units would say it is not an “Extreme” setup without a very good network switch between server and endpoint. I have used AL and Daphile and while Daphile does not work with Roon it certainly sounds much better in a single PC than Roon in a single box setup.