From the Details section for the Klipsch Stadium:
The USB digital connection means that the digital audio signal from your Apple device is transmitted directly to the system, minimizing noise interference and allowing use of the Stadium’s DAC, not the DAC in your iPod/iPhone/iPad.
Hi Matt
Welcome to Roon 
I would just like to add to the already useful feedback from the community. You are right that there are some bad user experiences with Bluesound - Roon but there are also those users who had a flawless trouble free experience. I struggled a lot with Roon - Bluesound and it took me a long time to achieve a stable and trouble free system. My recommendation would be to avoid WiFi if you go with the Bluesound Node 2i and to use ethernet instead. I would also recommend you do not commit to lifetime immediately. As others have mentioned above, you can certainly go for an annual subscription and if you like the Roon user experience you can upgrade to a lifetime.
Best
Yiannis
I did not mention in my previous add to your post that I use my Note 9 phone as a remote/endpoint with a big outdoor Bluetooth party speaker using the AUX connection.
Where I live we have about 3 months of cool weather and the rest of the time it is warm to very hot. With the temps, currently over 100, I have big 30 inch fans going in my garage and out in my shop. The noise level is high and I go for decent sound with volume over perfection. I can use this battery powered setup as far as the network can reach and it works fine in my metal shop building 40 feet from the house with a metal roof and at least 70 feet from the router.
I added this to your post for recommendations to emphasize the importance of the network piece with Roon.
You have numerous choices for endpoints, most of which I have no experience with. All i can say is, so far everything I’ve used for remotes and endpoints has worked without fail.
I wish you good fortunes on your Roon journey.
Roononians,
Great advice from all, very much appreciated. To be honest, I feel the lifetime membership is worth it for the community support alone. Fast, informative, and always appreciative witty comments. Ya’ll just sold me, thanks!
One thought: if you build your own i5 8 series or 10 series NUC instead of buying a Roon nucleus, the money you save will pay for the lifetime Roon subscription. Just a thought …
I’ve been looking at the small green computers vs the nucleus. The processing power for the i9 may be overkill but it was cover all formats and any upsampling I throw at it. I already have a maxed out NUC 8 Bean Canyon, i7, 4 core, 64GB of ram, 1TB M.2, 1TB SSD I use for a PC. I am considering converting this to a core and purchasing one of the Ghost or Quartz canyons for a PC. I am on the fence because 64GB of ram is probably overkill, from what I have read, 8GB is all the core uses.
With no GUI (or other processes going on) an i3 or i5 NUC, 8GB RAM, and an 128GB M2 is all you need for Rock: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit
You probably need less than you think you do for Roon, unless you have a really large library. Certainly the 8i7 is plenty (that’s what I use).
In the thread above we compared @simon_pepper’s i3 against my i7 for everyday stuff. There was nothing my i7 could do that couldn’t be done on the i3.
Note: single core clock speed trumps multiple core capabilities. The i9 would be helpful if you were doing a single box Roon/HQPlayer install (using SGC’s OS). But otherwise it’s just a bunch of wasted cores.
When I jumped in and built my NUC/ROCK core, I bought the lifetime subscription. My total cost for a more powerful NUC than the Nucleus+ by more than double, and the lifetime ROON was $1,864. My thought was that once I purchased the hardware, I was not leaving.
I have a RPi with IQAudio hat running ropieee in my garage with a couple of old speakers. While working on my bike/car it’s a great system to play the music I like. And Roonradio works also very well.
I bought lifetime two years ago and no regrets what so ever.
https://community.roonlabs.com/c/audio-products/ropieee/56. for more info on ropieee
I bought my lifetime membership about 3 years ago. The main reason for going that route was that I owned several Logitech Slimserver/SQB devices and Roon brought new life to those devices (Logitech had quit that market by then). I was basically trying to bring new life to my old devices. Roon worked beautifully with those devices and that allowed me to better explore Roon’s capabilities.
Today, three years later, I no longer own Logitech/SQB devices, therefore that would no longer be a reason for me to buy a Roon subscription. However, I learned of new reasons for using Roon.
For example, I discovered Roon’s library management capabilities and realized that there was nothing like it in the market. Then I explored the integration of Roon with Tidal/Qobuz and became hooked. This works so well that I rarely play my own music library! And with the new and improved algorithms for Roon Radio, Roon/Tidal/Qobuz help me discover new artists and music that I knew nothing about. I should mention the ability to use DSP filters to make digital room corrections and the integration of Roon’s/HQP for on-the-fly conversion of any music file to 512DSD.
Roon offers features that I knew nothing about. These features have become more important than the reason when I first bought it. Roon is, IMO, a must-have “equipment” in any digital set up.
It may not be the perfect analogy, but in an analog set up, when using a turntable you MUST-HAVE a phono preamp to play the music coming from your records to the rest of your audio system. Think of Roon as the connector (the ‘must-have’ phono preamp) of your digital music library and music services to the rest of your system.
When they jacked up the lifetime subs , if I remember correctly there was a hint opposite to that , @danny suggested that annual may drop in price
No doubt no one will comment now, still annual seems the best bet for me at the moment
I did not get than impression. As I said, I suspect prices for annual subscriptions will increase over time with inflation. Of course, we don’t know. It really depends on competition and what people are willing to pay.
It’s. Hinted at by Danny in this
You may need to scroll a bit
My advice try one year. In that time you
will learn of its many bugs and never hear resolution beyond 24/192 and even that is rare. Also there is no Roon Customer service only an army of users making one drive through dozens of responses and no direct solution. Seriously save some bucks
Roon is an awesome product, which I love, though it intermittently has issues when there are updates- either theirs or the equipment it interfaces with. I have always paid yearly, despite having been here for years, and like my other app and software subscriptions, it is just the price of using it. Whilst the idea of of a lifetime membership is attractive, no company can guarantee they will be around forever, so you take your chances- think MySpace, or even Kodak. So if you can’t cope with the idea that you are taking a risk, don’t do it and just pay as you go. It is likely cheaper than pretty much anything else you buy for your music system, and transforms you experience more.
I m in exactly the same place. Loved it at first then it started acting up and as i got more into it I realized I actually really dislike the UI while the daily bugs are driving me nuts. Wish I had not rushed into it.
Maybe this is not the best place for this statement.
A lifetime price is good if you want to make someone a present without forcing him/her to pay a yearly subscription later on.
Apart from that it is bad practice to sell lifetime subscriptions (whatever “lifetime” may mean).
To finance ongoing development and bug fixing you need ongoing incomes.
Too many lifetime subscriptions make it difficult to finance ongoing development.
Ongoing development is a must in our rapidly changing hardware and protocol world.
If you like Roon, make an annual subscription.
Cheers
Al
Roons cash flow isn’t really the customers problem! I would recommend going lifetime a) if you anticipate using it for a few years, b) while it’s still available.
It’s not a charity foundation.
If Roon didn’t want to offer lifetime, they wouldn’t. If you like the product and want to buy it and can afford it, no reason not to pay for it in one chunk. (And spend the savings on music!)
It’s kind of like saying that, even if you can afford to pay cash for your Audi, you should support the company by making monthly payments with interest and finance charges.