If I’m not mistaken, you can use a general Linux Pi distro and install a Roon endpoint.
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Pi into a Topping D10 or D10b.
Great value and sound. 
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I’m heading off to bed now and will reply tomorrow once I’ve double checked but… it may be possible running Roon Bridge on Moode Audio for you to implement DSP on the RPi rather than on Roon itself.
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Well the NAS is up to the task of streaming , just not DSP, hence the thought. Having Roon on my NAS is very cool and convenient and performs fine for my Bluesound Flexes and my local storage is on my NAS and it’s all connected directly by ethernet to my router streaming Qobuz. Very snappy and reliable…but DSP is another matter!
Also it’s only the Pi endpoint I want to EQ, the Flexes sound fine.
If you’re going to try… you may need to do something like this…
Roon wants control over the ALSA HW so this loopback trick is probably required to grab the audio and do something with it before it gets sent to the DAC.
But, otherwise, I agree with others… the Roon endpoint should be doing as little as possible. Maybe time to upgrade your core. 
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RPi3 was noisy due to it was sharing usb and Ethernet on the same bus, RPi4 isn’t so noisy anymore.
If you look around there are many “servers” that were never designed for audio: Roon Nucleus, Roon Nucleus+, Euphony Summus etc … they are just Intel Nuc in a fanless case without any “secret sauce” …
RPi4/RPi3 are used in many OEM streamers like Silent Angel M1T, Boulder 866, Okto Research Dac 8 Stereo and any review describe them as so noisy …
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Everything you mention here uses custom power supplies and pulls the I2S off the Pi to custom clock sources and output stages. Effectively, these things go way beyond what most people would consider a “HAT” but are really just that, HAT. If these manufacturers really thought that they could get the same performance (sound quality) by using the onboard USB you’d see a lot less hardware and custom parts going into the designs.
I’m sure manufacturers know you can get the same SQ using the onboard USB. They just want a piece of the pie, so they rely on misinformation to convince people otherwise.
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I’ve had look around and the following things are correct:
- Moode Audio can be installed on your RPi
- Moode Audio incorporates Camilla DSP - a bit about how this can be configured here
- Moode Audio can be used as a Roon Bridge
However, I don’t know if 2 and 3 can be done simultaneously. In other words it might be either DSP or Roon Bridge. There’s not much information about this as most people will use Roon for DSP rather than the software on their RPi.
The best course of action is, as others have said, to upgrade your core machine. The cheapest course of action is to try and configure an RPi with Moode and see what happens.
However… using Moode with Camilla DSP seems to be more hardware intensive. I have no idea if 2 GB RAM will be enough.
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Thanks Daniel I really appreciate you passing this information on. I will report back.
Not sure if this would work in your set-up but you could look into an add on EQ device, like the Schiit Loki Mini+.
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Yes that absolutely would work. I’ve been looking for a compact analogue EQ unit like this…thanks. Have not looked at the price yet though, I have a feeling it might be expensive…
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It’s Schiit gear so it’s actually peanuts pricing and have heard many good reports on this unit from my days in the Audiogon forums
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You’re right…$149
OK that’s the solution then. Thanks bearFNF
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The Schiit device is much more limited in scope than using PEQ in Roon (or Camilla).
I know you opened this post asking if Ropieee worked with a USB DAC and not a HAT, so this is a bit of an off-topic answer. But if you wanted a one-box DSP solution then HiFiBerry have a DSP add-on board for their HAT that you can used with HiFiBerryOS (which supports Roon / RAAT) to implement a low(ish) cost DSP setup. It can also be used with a USB measurement mic to provide basic automated RoomEQ.
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Damn just when I had a solution Jamie…will look now.
Daniel this is true but analogue is good…I’m looking to do some gentle boosting of HF along with a little LF cut so nothing fancy.
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The advantage of using Roon DSP is that you don’t need to spend the extra money for the hardware for each endpoint. If you’re already streaming to more than one room, or plan to do that in the future, a low cost computer to host the core may still be the better alternative. Also, should you decide to do measurement-based room correction, you’ll need a programable EQ.
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Sure…but I would need to spend money for a new core to run the DSP. The NAS is doing really sterling service!
I gotta say the Schitt is looking like the way to go to EQ one endpoint.
The HiFi Berry OS solution would work too but looks a little complex…