I keep hearing great things about Roon, but have been resistant to paying all that money just to have a decent interface, which should be part of the deal with the service IMO.
Roon is three parts: database server, audio endpoint and a client controller app. The server doesn't manage any files, just creates a large database of your files and Tidal is just one more source providing a consistent set of metadata per song, artist, etc, hiding duplicates preferring higher quality source. The endpoints can be the BDP, RPI, airplay, etc and the server can downmix the music files as necessary as it also keeps track of the clients and their abilities, finally the client app can be any computer or mobile device. There might be some quirks but it's rather impressive that you can play a Tidal song and then queue up your own song, and you can even enable zones for whole house audio. There's lot going of stuff going behind the scene to make the interface more than a list of tracks and they seem to enabling all sorts of open source and closed source devices.
Sadly the database server appears to be written in .net/mono so there are some steep hardware requirements for the server, so do the trial run before buying it. (tip: do not sign up for Tidal over an apple device)
Even if i don't stick with Tidal, I think Roon is worth the money if you have a late model synology/qnap NAS with several devices. Roon is a whole new level over mPod/mPAD and Soundrok MPD client apps.
