Whilst I fully understand your reluctance to use the MacBook, just how big is your aversion? As others have mentioned, there is plenty to read on the 'Roon Community' re Roon on an Qnap, but I think it is a fair assumption that trying this will be a lot of hassle and frustration, at best resulting in mediocre Roon performance. If you try with the Mac, I reckon you'll be up and running in half an hour with top performance. So low hassle, and at least this will give you a taste of Roon (you might hate it!), plus it will give you a benchmark, good or bad, with respect to sound quality with the Roon plus Totaldac combination. Of course, you can also try to forget the Mac is there by simply running via the app and a tablet. Sounds like an easy way to have some fun and get a lot of useful information, as opposed to the Qnap route that might simply be frustrating. So just how big is your aversion to invoking your MacBook??
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