Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Meridian Audio transfers software apps business to Roon Labs

What decisions can anyone have made based on facts known?

Options for Sooloos is hardly a disaster.

If S3.0 or Roon have a new pricing model to reflect what they offer then what is the issue with that.

What price have you decided is unreasonable? Or is anything you don't get free after your initial purchases unreasonable?

Roon will be multi hardware compliant so you don't want Linn etc. getting for free do you!!

Suggest you wait for facts and deal less with speculation before deciding you are hard done by.

I agree there are no grounds for complaint on cost grounds (I have always expected to pay something for "Sooloos 3", based on the expectations and rumours of what it would bring) but I do feel disappointed.
For me, one of the big plus points with the Meridian system was the fact they had the best hardware and software. Now we are back to just hardware.

No matter what spin is put on this, commitment to supporting Sooloos 2.x is now just product End of Life management in my estimation.
Sooloos 3/Roon was the next big thing, and it looks to me like there was a disagreement at some point that led to the separation.

Maybe we will hear more from both parties in due course which may or may not clarify what actually happened.
Regardless, I'm sure I'll be sending some cash Enno's way in the near future which I had hoped would be going to Big M.

It will all still sound as great as ever of course... it's just such a disappointment to me that we'll have to share the UI with others

I'm more concerned with the future wrt to Roon Labs. By their own admission, they are a very small outfit and, from past and recent experience, have a keen commercial eye.

Let's assume their GUI is best in class - the fact that it is multi-vendor/platform makes it extremely appealing to Apple, Sony, HP etc. and nothing prevents a take-over and future lock-out (of some vendors/platforms), including M.

If Roon is as good as we are led to believe, it would be a backward step, to say the least, to be forced back to a 'maintained' and 'ancient' Sooloos v2 software set with Meridian.

Also, I wonder what M themselves would do, if, after a while, when Roon becomes the de facto interface, if Roon went pear-shaped or, more likely, were bought out by a competitor? Like some on here, the recent (MQA) demos using v3 software were used very successfully, I suspect, to elicit more M hardware sales. After all, Sooloos is predominantly about the interface...

Putting your shop window in the hands of a 3rd party seems a little risky to me.

Zander

A clarification, the MQA demos did not use v3 software.
This I agree with, we can only trust that Meridian negotiated adequate safeguards.

Regards,
Carl

Agreed, to outsource your USP seems to be a distinct risk.

Russ

Reasonable expectation of Sooloos 3 being significant and free (based on past experience) leading to the decision of sticking with the Meridian ecosystem or investing in same. Part of the premium price of Meridian is the expectation of ongoing development. I bought some equipment on that basis, silly me.That's your opinion, I'm hugely disappointed, sorry.

I've no interest in Roon, whatever that is (there are many ways to access a NAS aren't there?) but Sooloos is something I bought expecting ongoing development (which I think it needs).

I bought Sooloos, with ongoing improvements. I'm not paying for OS upgrades and Sooloos isn't really the finished product.

No interest in Roon or Linn? I bought Soolooos.

What speculation am I dealing with? I feel hard done by, along with others (clearly).

Carl,

I stand corrected. Does that mean that there has, as yet, been no public demo of 'V3'?

Zander

Deja vu then Mr Bell.

I've spent the last few days feeling a certain degree of disquiet about the recent developments. Without getting too deeply into anxiety about what the future holds I'm glad to know I'm not alone in feeling let down. Admittedly by my own expectations and not about anything I've been promised, Because we all know Meridian don't like showing anybody their map.

Whatever happens, and we don't know yet, I am enjoying more and more music on you tube via Chromecast.
The quality is astounding and as an example enjoy Alison Moorer

Chris

I certainly don't think anyone should be criticised for having concerns and misgivings about this. I have them too. I'm still trying to work out if my rather expensive MD600 has a future. Time will tell and I hope my fears are groundless.

I'd concerned about how easy it would be to move the Sooloos library after all the time spent massaging the metadata. (And what happens with the multitude of 'Various Artists' tracks)

Some idea of whether we will ever get track level metadata with Sooloos would be nice, or whether Sooloos has now been switched to 'Maintenance mode' and only new adaptors for streaming services / minor tweaks will be added.

Given it has been about 5 months since the MQA announcement and we don't actually have a published roadmap on how we can get playback and how the existing products fit in, how much time will we need to wait to find out how obsolete our current equipment is?

Matt