Thank you for your very convincing input.

Since my original post I have benefited from a presentation and discussion with the founder and CEO of Roon (Enno Vandermeer). He is an excellent evangelist for what Roon can do, as you would expect, and his views and philosophy have been extremely helpful to me.

Actually, Roon does far more than I need for my own music collection, but, frankly, anything that can make Tidal's library more accessible to me in a controlled way which is not Tidal's idea of control is well worth thinking about and so I am nearing purchase of a Roon lifetime subscription.

What will clinch it is if I can adapt my Sooloos Control:10s to work with Roon (with specialised tinkering Koputai has shown us on HHGTM this can be done). It is only a physical form factor thing, but I prefer my C10s to anything else.

I looked hard at a Roon Nucleus, but I think I will just upgrade my (Sooloos) QNAP to a newer and more powerful model. If I buy one with enough drive bays (and a suitable processor/memory) I will be able to have mirrored RAID and a backup drive and a core SSD all in one box.

The Nucleus does not have the space for all that and the QNAP should cost less, thereby overcoming my hard-to-defend reluctance to spend too much on software (which I lack the skills to repair or tinker with, unlike hardware).

Cinema/Music: Trinnov Altitude32 8-16,218,Cloud 4 channel, Marantz UD5007,DSP5200SE(2+C),DSP3300(4),DSW(2),271,MShort Ceilings,AppleTV 4K
TV: Marantz SR7013 Wharfedale Diamond 9x4+Celestion(C)
Music: Roon,i7NUC8gen,QNAP TS253A, Sony Scala, MS200, Garrard DDQ650,Wharfedale Diamond 12.3
Kitchen: AD88 (bluetooth via i80).