For best sound quality the bridge approach either using a Sonore device or the free lms-to-upnp software is preferred. For me this sounds no different using Roon to Asset running off my QNAP and streamed services like QoBuz also sound as good as local music.
If you have a Windows PC or MAC then lms-to-upnp is really easy to get up and running. If you are lucky it will probably be 10 minutes work. I’ve not done this on a MAC but the pointers below for Windows should help you through this.
Firstly make sure any UPNP devices you wish to use with Roon are switched on and available on your network.
For Windows download the package, and unzip.
Open a command line and navigate to the bin directory (use the change directory - cd command)
Type squeeze2upnp-win.exe –i config.xml
This will run for about 30 seconds and search your network for any UPNP devices. It will create a configuration file called config.xml
Before using you need to edit the config.xml file, use a text editor like Notepad. You need to change the following lines
<roon_mode>1</roon_mode>
Change the 0 in the default file to a 1. If you don’t do this then your device will appear in Roon but will not play.
<sample_rate>192000</sample_rate>
This will set the correct maximum sample rate for your NDX.
Now start the program again without any command switches, i.e.
squeeze2upnp-win.exe
You should now see your devices in Roon and be able to play them. If you cant then it could be the firewall on Windows, you can verify this by temporarily disabling it.
Assuming that this works then there are some options available to ‘productionise’ this. I run lms-to-upnp within Logitech Media Server using a container on my QNAP. A Raspberry Pi also works well.
I suspect the reason why you had trouble with Logitech Media Server is that you didn’t update the <roon_mode>1</roon_mode> line in the config file. You also may have been trying to run Roon and Logitech Media Server on the same computer which won’t work.
Finally if using Logitech Media Server I found I needed to add an extra command line option to tell LMS where my Roon server was otherwise discovery was hit and miss, mainly miss. Obviously change the IP address to your own Roon server!