Audirvana Plus vs Roon - High Sound Quality at Lower Cost?

I was an Audirvana fan/user from 2012 until 2017. convinced it offered the best SQ available. As with most A+ users, I spent many an hour tweaking the settings.  Two years ago I decided to try Roon (1.3 at the time).  I immediately preferred the Roon presentation.  And that's without factoring in the file management and especially the radio function of Roon - which is probably the biggest difference.  So last year I coughed up the Roon lifetime membership fee with no looking back.  In my experience, you get what you pay for.

I keep trying Audirvana but going back to BitPerfect. Cheap and effective. 

I can't answer the question directly as I have never tried Roon. All I can say is; I have been using Audirvana Plus for several years now and have no plans to change anything. I am very pleased with the interface and the player works extremely well for me. I am there?

I think Audirvana Plus is outstanding.  I did a brief free Roon trial after installing Audirvana and thought Roon degraded the sound subtly.  My problem is that I don’t want my PC in the system, as I prefer to use it for computing.  After I turn off Audirvana I noticed occasionally the Printer settings would have to be reset.  Not a big deal, but annoying.  I didn’t feel that the interface that wonderful but the app works fairly well.  I have also heard that the updates can be problematic and was advised not to do them

I have tried Audirvana Plus with the free trial, but really don't see what the big deal is or why I should get Roon.  I understand how some people like all the additional information it provides, but if I really care, it's easy enough to go to Allmusic.  I couldn't tell any difference between Foobar 2000 and Audirvana and Foobar is free.  It is a little more fussy, it took some time to figure out how to play DSD files for example, but it's all good now.

Thanks everyone.

Mahler123, you mentioned you don’t want to use a PC.  Can I ask what you have Audirvana running on?

I am using a Mac Mini, “headless” without a keyboard mouse or display and connected directly to my DAC via USB.

On another note, my Mac storage is hybrid solid state and mechanical, which in theory is not supposed to be as good as pure solid state due to added noise on the USB line as well as emitted noise.  Not sure this is proven to have an effect though.

Finally, for those saying Roon doesn’t sound quite as good as Audirvana or others, Roon’s Knowledge base indicates that to maximize sound quality, the Roon  “core” must be physically separated from the hardware running the player that is connected to the DAC.  The core is supposed to be connected via Ethernet for maximum SQ.  I believe this is to isolate the audio rig including DAC and player from noise generated by the hardware the core is running on, but I’m not totally sure on the reasoning behind this.  Anyhow, just wondering if some who are saying Roon is inferior may be deploying the core and player on one single device which is connected to the DAC.  Roon works this way but they don’t suggest it in there Knowledgebase.

I do run Audirvana on my PC.  However, I prefer not to use my PC in my Audio System, and that is why I use renderers instead of the PC with Audirvana.
I have been using Bluesound, but recently I had a problem where I could not use it for a month.  I went back to controlling my NAS with Audirvana and my PC for that time.  It sounds truly excellent and the App isn’t bad, but it was a problem if I wanted to use the PC for something else, and I get tired of the Computer boot up, with the Apple notifications, etc

I'll put in another vote for Audirvana.  I use it exclusively on a mac mini server and run it from the very good iPad app.  Mostly playing local files stored on a NAS but I do use Tidal some.  You don't have total control of A+ from the app but it is excellent for playback.  Sound quality is excellent.

I have used Roon a lot and I think the interface is terrible.  It is so convoluted and cumbersome to navigate.  To me, simplicity is king and A+ is way way ahead in this regard.  Roon does have a little more flexibility in terms of browsing Tidal, but I don't think it is fun to use.  FWIW this is coming from someone age 33 so it is not like I am a geezer struggling to use new technology!  

I am running a MacBook Pro with a low end DAC (no MQA or DSD) over USB. Solid State 1TB storage. Audirvana and Tidal as well as local files. I feel my best next purchase for SQ will be the NAD C 658... I am using  AirPulse Model 1 powered speakers with balanced inputs... everthing sounds great.