Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Not liking Roon... Can I stream Tidal directly? How about Sooloos?

Library / Artists, Albums, Tracks, Composers?

Agreed...

Though it’s likely the Sooloos user interface was dictated by Meridian and I wonder if Roon might even be prevented by Meridian from copying certain elements.
Some of the Sooloos elements are so much better that I can’t think of any other reason roon hasn’t copied them.

Hi,

Just wondered if you are aware of this history behind all of this ... ?

Before "Meridian-Sooloos" there was "Sooloos" a USA based company, Meridian did not influence the screen design of the application is was all down to the Sooloos product team and developers.

Roon is what the next version of Sooloos was going to be ... before the Sooloos guys (that were working for Meridian) split out and formed Roon Labs ... effectively at this point all significant development on Meridian-Sooloos stopped.

Roon Labs, then rebrand Sooloos V3 into what we know now as Roon.

From what I understand, it became clear the Sooloos v3 aka Roon was never going to be able to run on the existing Sooloos hardware (C10, C15, MD600) as they were way to underpowered (and not economically upgradable) and the Roon team want a cutting edge system with the ability to grow and scale well beyond the Meridian Ecosystem.

At the time I was alpha testing Sooloos v3 ... it was quite a jar for me at first I was informed of the the split and rebanding ... but on balance for us consumers it was a good move as the product is better for it and which a much larger user base which beings a degree of longevity that I just did not see happening under Meridian's control.

For those that comment that Roon is too complicated ... it's not really, it can be complex but one can ignore the features that are of little interest and just stick to the main browser screens.
I used to run Sooloos and Roon in parallel at home to compare and contrast them ... but I have to stay I've not fired up Sooloos for years now. Roon plus an iPad Air 2 as control works well for me and when the iPad Air 2 eventually runs out of steam (Apple iOS upgrades and noticeable slowdowns) I'll get an new iPad Pro.

Stay Safe,
Carl

When you ran Sooloos and Roon in parallel, which is what I would like to do, did you run them on the same network? If so I would very much like to know how you managed it. Because I want to use the same endpoints (where feasible, eg MS200s) on either Roon or Sooloos, though not simultaneously of course, I am expecting to have to turn off one core or the other as necessary, but last time I tried it there seemed to be some background processes on the control devices that wouldn't let go of an endpoint even when the related core was off.

Hi Carl

Yes Sooloos existed as a company before Meridian however, while owned by Meridian it's likely Meridian had significant if not complete control over the interface.

I totally agree that on balance it's better that a product is available in some form to a larger base but unlike many other audio brands, Meridian no longer has its own streaming platform. I fell in love with Meridian partly because of its elegant and unified approach to engineering and design (Bob/Allan) and feel that Meridian's current course including its reliance on third parties dilutes many of Meridians core values.

Here's a very simple example... Even on a 27" 5k iMac iPad Pro, changing the volume in Roon requires me to first click the speaker icon to reveal the + and - buttons. With all that screen why do Roon require that extra unnecessary click? Meridian understood that PLAY and VOLUME were 2 of the most important controls and made them as easy as possible to access by colour then red and green. Similarly, Sooloos has the + and - visible onscreen.

It's clear that Roon benefited technically from their time under Meridian ownership but might not have paid as much attention to the Meridian philosophy. Similarly, it appears the current Meridian owners might not fully appreciate the unique qualities of the brand either.

I use my MSR + for volume in Roon as well as the Roon app and Meridian App. Ideas to change things should be put as a feature request on the Roon forum as it is always in development.

Nick

I run Sooloos and Roon on the same network utilising the same Meridian endpoints; ID41, 218 and occasionaly MS200 - all work fine.

In the early days of running both, I found that I turned to Sooloos (running on a MC200) first - now I turn to Roon (ROCK on a NUC) first unless there is a reason not to. The latter case being should I wish to control things from an older iPad that is not capable of running the Roon application, as you highlighted in one of your posts.

I am using smart switches in my network and did have to configure them appropriately in the first instance plus, and this is key, just have a single connection to the BT HH5, the ISP provided hubs are just not worth the trouble in trying to use them as switches, just let them perform a routing and DHCP function with a single WAN connection out to the hub.

Other than the above, there is nothing special about my network, occasionally, Sooloos and / or Roon can be slow to fire up probably due to the fact it take a few moments for the multicast packets to get sorted, normally everything works smoothly with fast start up.

Let me know if I can offer any specific advice beyond the above.

Thanks

John

I'm running both Roon and Sooloos on the same network, no problems. The Meridian Sooloos endpoints (M218 & MS600) are also Roon endpoints. You have to go to Roon's Audio Setting to enable the endpoints for Roon. If you use the shared endpoints for Sooloos, it'll become disable for Roon. I supposed it's to prevent conflict with 2 Cores sharing the same endpoint. If you want to use it for Roon again, you have to go to Audio Setting and enable it.

Meridian Sooloos control has different user interfaces optimized for Desktop, Touch PC ( same as Control:10 & 15), iPad and iPhone. I do agree the compact iOS Sooloos interface is much simpler to use especially for casual listening, assuming most people use an iDevice for control. The Touch PC App is full feature and works better on a large screen. The drawback is I need to use the Desktop or Touch PC App for editing and more advanced features.

Roon's iOS App is full feature, not a stripped down version like Sooloos. The one size fit all Roon App works better on a larger screen and feels more like a internet browser interface than the Sooloos iOS App IMO.

I just stumbled across a video where Allen gives us some insight into his/Meridian”s design philosophy. Some notable quotes include:

The challenge is what to leave out...

The right solutions are always the ones where there’s nothing extraneous. There’s nothing that shouldn’t be there or unnecessary...

The design which is correct is the one where you can see no effort...

Even if a product is hugely complex... we only ever present the customer with simple choices... so they can turn it on, how loud is it, what do you want to listen to, done!

Rest In Peace Allen

Thank you (and John/JCD) for your responses which are very encouraging. I'll dig out my Sooloos stuff and try again. It was in my early Roon days that I failed and it may well have been unfamiliarity with Roon, notably your point about having to enable endpoints in Roon, which I now recall caught me out, among many other things. Roon is clearly a product for aficionados and while I often like complexity (my hobby is repairing electronics at component level or other things like car transmissions) when it comes to music listening I just want it to work. Switch on, choose, play and listen works for me. Come back Mr Boothroyd (good quotes JustAlex).

I switched on my amp and DAC this morning, went to the iPad clicked on the Roon icon and clicked play and it carried on playing from where I stopped it yesterday, oh for the simplicity of Sooloos

This can't be true, my wife uses it no problem.