There’s really no getting around needing a server to send bits of digitized music to your renderer. Some chunk of code has to send the data down the network connection in response to a request from the renderer. Roon, Qobuz, Tidal, or your NAS can’t serve music without server software.
Maestro’s shtick is that doesn’t act as a man-in-the-middle, receiving and retransmitting digitized music to your renderer. In that sense, it’s no different from JPlay or mconnect on your smartphone pointing your DAC to music on your UPnP/DLNA server or having Qobuz tell your DAC where to directly retrieve music with Qobuz Connect. Maestro can’t sound any better than using either of those because it works the same way. It’s the extras, like the Ella AI assistant, that provide a value-added component to Maestro.
Heck, the JPlay app also does Qobuz as well as UPnP/DLNA, just like Maestro. If you’re just waiting until an iDevice or Android app is available before you subscribe to Maestro, you can use JPlay in the meantime to get a sense of how Maestro will sound on your system.
— Chris