Hmmm. I seee that apart from the DAC my system would need some upgrading before it can meet Roon’s specs. I require more SSD’s to store music for its “core” system as obviously it considers outboard USB drives as sub-par, and I’d need to move my “noisy” main computer to a closet, which is not practical atm considering the cost of longer decent audio-grade USB and Ethernet cables, we’re talking like $200 a pop for two-meter lengths, would have to add that to the cost of the DAC if I am to walk the Roon path. It is otherwise reasonably priced but gear requirements are a lot of dough to absorb in one shot.
Right now I have Reference 4 system-wide installed (alternating with SoundID) DSP so I’m using the Elear since the Elegia is not yet supported by Sonarworks (neither is the Stellia but it doesn’t need it). My initial intent was to replicate Oratory !990’s EQ profile (which Sonarworks does quite well on the Elear) but since the Elegia is not supported I thought of using APO which may look crude but is a fully-fledged parametric EQ with the caveat of a steep-ish learning curve but no more difficult than, say, mastering Foobar 2000. I know how to set APO with or without Peace but it’s a workload I was hoping to pass on to Roon but it doesn’t look like it’s going to go as planned. APO road I guess, the crude graphic EQ in Foobar is not going to cut it and besides that Foobar has too many DSP settings to choose from including many deprecated. Instead of streaming I’ll use downloaded FLAC’s stored on USB drives and just play them through Foobar in exclusive WASAPI mode but I have no idea if APO output will remain bit-perfect or if that’s even possible. Probably not but that DAC won’t mind and it matters little in a basic correction test.