You said that you would ditch Roon if the Nucleus sounds the same as a laptop*. Unless your DAC is broken, it most certainly will “sound” the same since its purpose is to deliver a bit-perfect stream to your DAC.
*Actually, as @WiWavelength points out, the Nucleus has no fan noise.
When I started with digital audio 10 years ago or so, I went through multiple iterations with sources. From much experimentation including blind A/B listening (my dear wife is an excellent listener and discriminator of sound quality), I did conclude that certain components are sensitive to the electrical properties of upstream sources. Changing either the digital transport method (S/PDIF, USB, I2S) or the streamer supplying it made a significant difference downstream. Just as an example, at some point I owned an Auralic Aries Femto > Yggdrasil > Hegel 360 > KEF Reference 1 + REL t7i very carefully set up in a good listening space. USB from the Aries to the Yggdrasil was clearly worse than coax S/PDIF. Then I got in the Unison USB beta with Schiit, and also acquired an Allo USBridge with Sbooster LPS. Unison + USBridge trumped S/PDIF. Some time later, being an inveterate computer tinkerer, I built a Pi + Pi2AES streamer. S/PDIF from this to the same Yggdrasil, even with a basic Mean Well SMPS, beat the previous setup by a hair (all of these were judgments my wife gave, with detailed descriptions of the differences, without knowing which was which). I have had similar experiences with Metrum, early Holo, and Sonnet DACs. Source device and transport method matter. Even high-end Linn streamers are surprisingly sensitive to how they are connected to the network, my two Klimax DSMs improved distinctively (to the point that my wife just spontaneously asked “what happened, it sounds more incisive and clear”) when we replaced cheap Netgear switches with somewhat more expensive Cisco switches with better power supplies.
The lesson is that even good gear is not totally immune to sources of electrical interference that piggybacks on the wires whose main function is to transport bits but cannot avoid the laws of physics. That interference can have varying effects inside the DAC, which is then described with subjective terms like digititis, flat, muddy, …
The main recommendation I give in these discussions is to be systematic in comparisons, change just one thing at a time, and ideally trust an independent listener who does not know or care about the things being compared. In particular, DACs, even supposedly high-end ones, may behave differently with different connection methods and sources. In the present case, unless the streamers are connected to the downstream system exactly in the same way as the CD/SACD player, you may be comparing the DACs implementation of the connection receivers, not the sources.
Hmm, this is the only YouTube I could find where the CEO talks about Nucleus. He doesn’t wax, poetic or otherwise, about Roon improving sound. He does talk a great deal about flexibility, reliability and convenience.
Link to the vid you are referring to, please?
This is a topic up for debate. There are many people on this forum, as well as audiophile reviewers, who believe the Nucleus sounds better than a consumer computer. And there is the bits are bits crowd who dispute such notions.
I plan to find out for myself. My mind will be made up after I do the audition. At this moment, my mind is decidedly not made up.
There are those who will $30K for Taiko Extreme music server, and others who feel no server can possibly sound better than their $500 Dell laptop. There are no right or wrong answers. Instead, there are only what an individual concludes is right for them as this is a highly subjective hobby.
This is not a debate I wish to have. I watched several videos with Enno in which he was discussing the benefits of the Nucleus. Sound quality was one of the benefits he alluded to.
I’m not going to go through my YouTube viewing history and provide time stamps of what I saw for something so meaningless.
My experience was that Enno was absolutely implying a sonic benefit. You might have a different interpretation, and that’s ok.
Ultimately, what Enno thinks has little meaning to my inquiry. The only thing that matters to me, is what I conclude via direct experience.
Setting that aside, in the community at large, there are a contingent who believe the Nucleus sounds better than a Mac Mini. That may or may not be true. My only plan - and I fail to understand why this troubles some here - is to do a few home auditions and see what I think.
What else can one do but try things out for themselves???
Once the trial is complete, I will post my personal opinions of how the Nucleus stacks up against the Mac Mini, ZenStream and the Aurender. Others can make what they will out of those honest opinions.
Thank you for the thoughtful, well constructed and insightful post.
Just wondering, how do you use your zen? AIO? USB or SPDIF? (maybe you posted that info and I have missed that) (for me: ethernet, was knob roon only going usb to dac and now knob NAA only usb to dac, not yet on Elite but on powerx).
Thanks
Not troubled. Most people, in this thread, understand that the machine the software runs on has no effect on the sound.
Please return to let us know the result of your experiment.
@Traian_Boldea SPDIF with Tidal Connect. Sounds remarkably good.
Blows away Roon on the Mac mini.
Oy vey.
Once again, these are matters up for debate.
Thanks. Now I’ll have to try 
Which your unbiased experiment will resolve.
In the spirit of my earlier comments:
Same enough to satisfy me. It was not close in terms of sound quality.
Whether or not it’s same enough for the grand inquisitor is something you will need to decide for yourself.
Roon is world class at many things. Sound quality is not one of those things. In my opinion.
However, I did not travel to Norway and examine the Tidal servers.
I’m sorry that you don’t seem to understand my clearly stated points. You may not care to do the work to assign blame accurately, but it is unfair to attribute to Roon what may be the result of other confounding factors, several of which I listed, and you in effect have been wasting the time and attention of many here who tried to help you. You certainly won’t get another second of mine.
I have not asked for your help determining why Roon, in the 4 years I have owned a lifetime license, has always sounded mediocre. I have already explored every affordable option available to me from these forums regarding sound quality, save the Nucleus which is in route.
You are not offering help. You are offering an impenetrable defense of Roon.
All I asked for were ready made Roon Core alternatives to the Nucleus. I did not ask for an assault from a minority clique of Roon defenders because I dare to question Roon’s sound quality.
Outside of this little bubble, it’s well known that Roon functions great, but sounds only average. And that there are better sounding alternatives that cannot match the Roon user interface.
If you have some Roon Core ideas, let ‘em fly.
I am not interested in the Roon Defense Core peanut gallery that scurry about like the rhinos in The Gods Must Be Crazy stomping out fires. Been there. Done that.
I’m not defending Roon, I’m defending a consistent experimental approach to sound quality questions. You may not want to bother with that approach – your time and money after all – but many times, in my experience and that of others, the role of the Roon core in sound quality has been shown to be immaterial compared with the other factors I pointed out. It’s not that Roon cannot be bested – for example I use HQPlayer DSP rather than Roon’s for my Holo DACs – but that such determinations are best done with experimental care. I’m done here, anyway, just bothered that you shifted to ad hominem implying that I’m a shill for Roon. Bad form on your part, which unfortunately is not unexpected given the increasingly shrill tenor of your contributions. I hope you find audio peace somewhere, but it won’t be at my expense.
And a lot of people are saying that elections were stolen.
Not everything that is “well known” is factual or even logical.
AJ
Let’s take a step back from the insulting comments in your last few posts. No one, outside of you, has resorted to name calling.
Taking your comment into account, it seems your complaint is about Roon software. How is buying a new box that runs Roon software going to change that? Specifically, how is the Nucleus going to change that? It doesn’t run anything, but Roon Core.
I love my little Roon Nucleus, but not because it sounds better. It just works (almost) all the time and I don’t accidently shut it down while doing other things as with my Dell.