You're paying for the convenience of Roon categorizing your personal music and integrating it with Tidal/Roon. Even if you don't use Tidal or Roon, it does a fantastic job categorizing and genre matching your music. Think of Pandora style radio with your own music. It automatically tags and assigns album art too. For many albums, it will give you a synopsis of the album and a review of said album. It will also tell you about the artist and some background info. So part of your fee goes to their intellectual property.
The problem I've always had with my music collection is I have so many albums It's hard to remember what I have. I end up listening to the same albums over and over. The Roon radio feature explores my entire library. Can you do all of the with another program cheaper? Probably. But I don't have the time or patience. I want to spend my time listening and enjoying the music.
I'm not going to get into if Roon "sounds better" than another program. I've used iTunes, Fidelio, and Audirvana. I can't say I've heard any difference playing the ALAC files ripped from my CDs. YMMV
The RAAT protocol streams bit perfect to the poly/mojo without dropouts or glitches.
I'm sure that there are more features to Roon I haven't touched or mentioned, but this is how I use it.
Hello Daniel,
thank you for your long answer. Yesterday I sat down and listened to Roon and Qobuz the whole evening. I can confirm everything you said. I don't want to spend the time to manage everything. Roon does that superb. A lot of music I haven't listened for a long time was played by Roon radio. So I think for me (a man in the end 30s with family) it is worth every penny!
Have a nice week
Marc