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

When I bought into Sooloos it was as a package, ie Rip, Store, Play.

I bought an MC200 despite the fairly poor iPad UI at the time, in the knowledge that an improved App was in the pipeline. This has been delivered but then pretty much nothing.

I bought an ID40, then ID41 endpoint because of the jump in SQ and have not been disappointed.

Sooloos 3 was often whispered about and I was excited when one of the original devs started posting here a while ago.

But frankly this news is somewhat disappointing. I'm tempted to word that more strongly, but respect the forum and what it stands for. And also, lets be honest, we don't actually really know what we are going to be offered, let alone cost.

I have ZERO interest in subscription models, I would try Tidal for 3 months if and when it supports MQA, but have little expectation beyond the free trial. I certainly have no interest in paying for Roon month after month when all I really want is to play MY music.

I expect to continue to buy physical media and rip as and when I feel the urge.

I have refrained from posting so far, because there are too many unknowns, but if the Meridian Execs are following this thread, I felt a tentative outline of my feelings may be of interest. My investment in M gear is fairly substantial, I'm fully SE and ready for MQA, but am beginning to wonder where this is going.

Regards
Greg

With MQA we are all going to need to either Stream MQA files or buy MQA files/ discs.
So Tidal may well make perfect sense for you Greg if you feel the quality jump is worth it?

I would imagine your systems sounds just amazing right now and whatever happens, that's not going to go away.

I think we all have to just wait and see. Chris

To quote Danny on Roon forum:
Fully agree there are still many unknowns on the Meridian side.
I am very positively surprised (and energized) by Roon's interactivity and willingness to share.

Just thinking out loud.

Meridian bought Sooloos and its associated I/P and brought on board Sooloos employees.

Some of the ex-Sooloos employees have now left to form Roon in what some believe is a divorce like separation.

In the intervening period, Sooloos v3 is developed as a new software architecture, capable of running on non-proprietary cores and addressing a number of user requests (such as track level meta-data, Android control etc.)

The v3 development was publicly disclosed on this site by Enno, so the development work was presumably being done with Meridian's knowledge and consent.

If the development work was being paid for by Meridian, internally or via contract, why wouldn't the work product be owned by Meridian?

If it were an other than amicable divorce, I would have thought there would be a fight over the I/P that's being used as a basis for the new company.

Maybe Meridian saw that v3 could have a much larger market than being within the MDMS, and that efforts to try and sell it as a software products to other customers (such as Linn) would represent a channel conflict. Spinning it off into a separate company, provided it's seen as being (or is) independent, would open up the wider market. If so, I assume that Meridian would be paid for the I/P directly or via licensing.

As MDMS users, this may be materially no different than what we might have seen if v3 had stayed within Meridian - they might have asked for a lifetime or annual fee for a major upgrade anyhow. It wouldn't be different from most software then - you can stick with v2.x and just get maintenance updates or pay for the new v3 to get new features.

I rarely quote stuff in replies but these two paragraphs are really where my thoughts are at. Good points Ian.

If you have to invest several $m to develop a new media engine and platform, then even if this was always going to be a paid-for option, then existing and new Sooloos customers would never be enough to recoup this development cost. The cost will not be small if you only think of a small ream of say 5 salaries for 2-3 years plus new licence costs for the 3rd bits they will need.

The best way to manage this is to widen the market and give the new tool some independence. This means a stronger and more viable platform than otherwise.

Nick

You are quite right, however you neglect to mention HP Connected music which if my understanding is correct was in a large part the fund generator for Roon (Sooloos3 as was) development?

Russ

It's good to see some positivity returning to this thread. I hope that the changes result in better products all round and that neither party lose out in the settlement!

The wait continues...

Please forgive me if I am wrong but, I have a vague recollection (word of mouth only) that Sooloos 3 was being developed within Meridian.

However the product was "Still Born" for whatever reasons and maybe, just maybe, the internal parallel development / competition was considered superior.

Oh to have been the fly on the wall.

Just my thoughts

Hector

Hector
High risk strategy.

Russ

With all due respect, such rumour and conjecture is not particularly useful at this stage.

Where does the HP Connected software fall in all this? Mr. Buchanan says "transfer the company�s software applications business". Maybe I'm parsing too much, but with the understanding that Sooloos software stays at M, what exactly was the software applications business? I didn't know M had such a business unless it's the HP software.

Interesting question as it was portrayed as being effectively Sooloos3/Roon, so I suspect it is with Roon now?

Russ