I almost feel as if I’m betraying Roon but my usage decreased to the point where I’ll have the NUC powered off for weeks. I make sure to power it up once a month and leave it on for 24 hours in case there’s stuff Roon needs to do and/or update everything.
I’m certain this is just a phase and I’ll return to daily usage at some point; my laziness to just use TIDAL Connect is the root cause.
Roon remains my main choice for music, largely because it supports convolution filters that are essential in my music room.
This is turning into a thread about what makes Roon so good. Here’s a feature that I don’t think has been mentioned yet: the uniformity of the user interface across a wide variety of devices and device types. Granted the user interfaces are slightly different for each device type, such as phone or other “small” screen portable devices, like a digital audio player, which in turn is different than the UI for tablets and again for desktops and laptops. However the UI is the same on all laptops, be they Macs or PC or Linux. Using Roon I get full access to my local library, Tidal, Qobuz and nug.net, all through a UI that I’m very familiar and comfortable with. That’s a very big deal for this lazy old man. 
Along with the significantly better UI experience available with Roon generally, this is one of the main advantages of using Roon as my control point for all of my home based music playing devices. Quite simply - it just works!
I do use the Tidal app in my car, but I have absolutely no plans to ditch Roon any time soon!
At home and in the car I use Roon and Roon Arc 100% of the time but 95% of my listening is from local files. I only use Qobuz to check out potential purchases. It’s a generational thing I guess.
I suppose its what kit you have
I consciously purchased a streamer, second room powered speakers and a Mojo2/Poly to have 3 Roon ready devices around the house. Built a Roon nuc to power it all .The fact that they are great devices anyway makes the investment worthwhile
I think I am now maximising the capability of Roon so having 1 interface that works brilliantly well is all I need (apart from on the move when Im afraid Spotify is still best for me!)
Just a suggestion: give Tidal or Qobuz a try and if you like either one of them then use that instead of Spotify since Tidal/Qobuz integrate well with Roon and Spotify doesn’t.
I’m not a fan of Qobuz Connect. I ran Roon, optimized for best SQ, for several years on a Windows laptop. When dCS announced support for Qobuz Connect, I tried running it directly from my Bartok DAC, thinking that bypassing the PC would improve the sound. I was so wrong, Qobuz Connect sounded flat and lifeless. Ultimately, I replaced the PC with an Innuos Stream 3 with the USB re-clocking card feeding the DAC and it sounds amazing.
I have a subscription to both Tidal and Qobuz, so it is much easier for me to let Roon go out and grab my requested music genres from my library, Qobuz and Tidal simultaneously, without any interaction from me.
I’ve tried this many times, even recently was like ‘ok, lets just use Qobuz and no Roon’. Roon becomes in my opinion a bit expensive - from a monthly perspective it costs the same as Qobuz. I would not need to run a core to stream music etc. Oh so many benefits.
But I keep coming back to Roon. Why? The UI is simply the best, by a long margin. Now if streaming services implemented some of the core features that the Roon UI offers, it would be game over for Roon.
But for now, streaming services are for those that just want to ‘listen to some music’. Roon is for music lovers.
Qobuz for me is an addition to my own extensive library of music. So Roon has become a no brainer over the past 5+ years. I’ve also picked up a lifetime subscription back in the day. Which will have paid itself for next year.
But if one only uses a streaming service as their source of music. Roon is much harder to justify financially. Especially with services such as Tidal Connect and Qobuz Connect. But for me Roon is simply much better. Not only because of its integration of Qobuz with my own collection. But also the ability to team up my streamers as a single zone. And not to forget Roon ARC which works great here.
Are there things that can be improved? For sure. However I haven’t found a total package such as Roon elsewhere.
So Roon it is.