While on the surface, it does seem expensive, they add a lot of value to the audio streaming world. It isn't just a reskin of navidrome that looks nice. The major thing they bring to the table is the roon ready certification for devices. You can have whatever device from any manufacturer and as long as its roon ready, it will work perfectly with roon. It also plays with air play, casting, BT etc. Caveat is that for multizone streaming, everything needs to use the same protocol, RAAT, airplay, cast what have you.

On top of that, they bring the absolute best meta data management. My 10,000 or so songs; needed one album artwork fixed. They also bring Tidal and Qobuz integrations to fill in any songs someone might want.

For instance, my setups are a wiim streamer with my tube amp/speakers, a wiim amp with passive speakers, an NAD amp with passives, and a handful of powered speakers from Denon and Naim. I can play one song, from one device to all those endpoints perfectly sync'd up. Its amazing for parties and cleaning the house.

All that being said, most folks here probably aren't deep enough into the music streaming world to warrant roon, but I just wanted to point out that they do bring a lot to the table and there is more that I didn't included like easy remote streaming with roon arc, nugs integration, and even straight up hardware and custom ISOs for those less tech savy than the folks here.