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The setup you're considering is brilliant. It's only drawback is the expense. I do have some occasional niggles with Roon running on an NUC but I've also got quite a bit going on on my network.
I've been using it for a few years and it does everything you've realised it does and more. It's great for finding related music and the reviews and metadata are extensive.
Your NAS may be able to run the Roon core too. Apparently it's a a bit slow on larger libraries running on a NAS but a large library in Roon terms is huge, I would guess that some Roon users have more hours in music in their libraries than they have hours left on earth.
I ran a little test for a year with Tidal and Qobuz side by side. Qobuz had 3 titles I added to my library that couldn't be found on Tidal after a year of searching. With Qobuz you can also buy digital music if that's your thing. I settled on Tidal because they provide slightly higher quality files as their baseline. If I wasn't using a decent size library to start with I might have gone with Qobuz.
Qobuz only albums were all electronica, I'm guessing Tidal can't get one or 2 electronic labels to play ball.
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Airhead
ChasnotRobert
This discussion has lead me to investigate Tidal and Roon and now I have a bit of a dilemma.
I currently use JRiver MC which is fine to play files from my NAS and stream stuff from the internet. It's a decent piece of software and costs very little (one off licence payment).
There is something like 300 Gb of FLAC files on my NAS (all ripped from CDs which I own); I don't use any streaming services other than internet radio.
I could get Roon and Tidal HiFi for about £30 / month. This would give me:
A much nicer user interface from what i can see of Roon on their website, with additional features that would make it really easy, particularly when coupled to Tidal, to explore new music;
A pretty much complete library which would negate the need to buy and rip CDs, keep various storage places mirrored etc;
Largely negate the problems of transporting music around;
Enable simple second systems with e.g. just a set of wireless speakers.
I'm kind of tempted to try it out.
Any views on this? am I over stating the benefits? Any views on how good the Tidal catalogue is?