OK, hopefully I’ve digested this. So I’ll reply within the context of the OP.
Yes, but that’s not the only way you can get the advantages…
Because that can work very well also - the demand pull from the DAC’s clock is passed to the streamer, which in turn pulls from the player (Roon) at the rate requested by the DAC.
The only problem with this second scenario is that no two clocks can never synchronize perfectly, much less three. So adding the streamer in the middle adds one more layer of possible timing discrepancy that would be avoided if the DAC’s clock were communicating directly with the player (Roon) instead. But - as I understand it - this only applies to asynch USB connections between the streamer and the DAC. The use of S/PDIF from streamer to DAC takes the DAC’s demand pull out of the scenario, and the driving clock is instead with the streamer. That is it’s own problem, but not unique to the OP RAAT question.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. And thanks again for the detail reply.