I asked way up in the thread if Shairport is fiddling with the bits in any way (asking the question - I don’t know the answer).
So I decided to find my old AirPort Express (which has TOSlink output…) to hear if it’s any different to using the DigiOne’s Shairport Airplay. It’s digital coax RCA vs TOSlink so not exactly apples to apples. I then dusted off my old HiFiBerry Digi+ Pro with it’s TOSlink output, to make it a closer comparison.
There is a difference to my ears. I won’t claim Shairport is doing anything funky to the bits (I don’t know) but it’s not official Apple Airplay support - I would suggest you pickup a used AirPort Express if you can. They’re going for cheap on eBay after being discontinued.
I also have a Bluesound Node 2i at the moment, which supports Airplay 2 and Spotify Connect (both officially). So that should cover you with the native Tidal, Deezer and Spotify native iOS apps, which all have a great UI/UX in their own different ways.
The Node 2i’s Airplay also sounds noticeably better (to my ears) than the DigiOne’s Shairport Airplay.
I’m using the Node 2i for something other than Roon at the moment. I’m using a HQP Embedded server acting as a hub (a recent new HQPe feature) and I can feed the Node 2i’s digital output (or any TOSlink output) into the HQP server input and apply DSP to Tidal/Deezer/Apple Music/Spotify/whatever and send this DSP’ed audio over the network to endpoints, to the DACs. Works and sounds fantastic.
Would be great if RoonOS could act as this type of audio hub in future. I know @danny himself has expressed interest in the past but that is for a separate topic.
All devices I’ve mentioned above (DigiOne, HiFiBerry Digi+ Pro, Bluesound Node 2i) are all great Roon endpoints too, of course.