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

I saw Enno's post just now and I understand that Roon is not Sooloos. But if Roon is launching something shortly, then they've been developing this for some time while on Meridian's payroll. I wish Roon all the best, but what is the Sooloos application at this point, who are the developers and how (if at all) will it be different from Roon?

I realize you may not have those answers or are not in a position to share what you do know, but I am baffled at the timing and the communication around it. I hope things will fall in to place but I had expected a different approach given the positive developments on the communication front in the last few months.

You can.

Sooloos software and hardware hasn't changed because of this announcement. 2.2 has just been released and presumably MQA is still to come within Sooloos. I use Sooloos 2.2 every day and I love it!

As for what Roon is doing, and why, I refer you to Enno's earlier post here.

What about the Sooloos v3 that was eluded to?

I assume that this will no longer come, but we'll have to buy/subscribe to it seperately as part of the new Roon application?

That would be my guess too... But would love to hear otherwise.

Now we know why we have heard nothing for some time about Sooloos "3" that we were teased with awhile back. It appears that the rumors were correct that the original Sooloos developers were working on products for other hardware.

I wondered myself, how can you keep the Sooloos software team still at Meridian. Entrepreneurs needs "impossible"/ambitious goals for world domination.

The Roon software will no doubt be very succesful and we're back to having Meridian produce the best possible Audio/Video endpoints.

Meridian had probably some sleepless nights about, should we create a super software company but the salesmodel doesn't cover that. We pay for the hardware, not hardware+subscription. Although that can and might change if you have something like a Roon software "musicserver service".

There is one thing I wonder about though. Meridian could easily do this and that and snap into a car audio system when they had these people. What do they do now when the next business crossbranding is thought about. Today we can't argue that an agile software team is king, but how do you nurture them?

Ok, so this is where I've landed for now:
- The Tidal integration is a success! It sounds awesome.
- Goodbye local CD rips. I only need storage for exotics and highres files locally.
- Expect that this disappears with advent of MQA.
- Two risks on that:
- Dependent on Tidal on content and realistic pricing. Would be much better if Meridian opened up the eco system.
- Adoption of MQA.

In line with that, the added value of the ' core' products is pretty much end of life. Assuming Meridian and/or Roon finds a way to connect to the endpoints directly from the cloud.
Remarks from Roon seem to suggest this is already the case.

- Until the new stuff is out there I can't sell my MC200
- My 861v6 doesn't have a decent USB in at the moment and it requires a wait till the new revamp and me hoping I can get away with simply adding a new ID29 version which adds USB high res in and MQA (as I am happy with the current level of performance and don't want a full upgrade).
- But, although there of course will some residual value, I expect MC200 to go extinct based on both the intel here and, more importantly, the whole cloud movement, which means I have mentally had to write it off (and I need to consider moving to a QNAP NAS for future storage).

The overall silver lining though is that I have this hope that the resulting mix of Roon and Tidal with my 861v6/ID40/MQA & USB enabled ID29 combo will be awesome:
- great sound
- all the music in the world without me putting effort into ripping etc.
- awesome music quality through MQA
- and last but not least, excellent, 2020 style, user interaction experience, with great discovery etc. etc.

Just sad it is going to require patience and a very big deal of blind faith to get there.

A little bit more light on the Meridian roadmap would go a very long way to keep things going in the meantime .

If Enno hasn't had a Sooloos system to play with for a while, who is working on the current and future Sooloos core and client software if not for developers Meridian have hired in separately from the original Sooloos folks? Just speculation though.

I agree - will the "rumoured Sooloos 3" when it comes be usual free Meridian upgrade - with or without integration of TIDAL and MQA...?

or will this whole thing be now handled by Roon and we then have to pay a subscription to Roon.

Like MQA but for different reasons this looks like a game-changer in the streamed audio space.

Obvious question bearing in mind Roon is offering Sooloos on several other platforms, can we expect it will function on older Meridian products - e.g. C15 and TwinStore - both are really born in another hardware /software age.

Food for much thought.
Regards
Huw

Am I alone in thinking that the premium prices I paid for Meridian Sooloos products was justified while there was an expectation and delivery of a stream of improvements. I now find that some of that premium has been used to create a new product for which I will have to pay again and possibly that some of the improvements have been deliberately excluded from the "ancient" Sooloos 2.x

Hi Huw,

The recent Sooloos 2.2 release, along with future updates will continue to be worked on Meridian staff. So nothing changes there, the original developers have not worked on Sooloos for sometime now.

I'm sure that the Meridian Sooloos 2.2, that we know and love will continue to evolve.

The "Sooloos 3" application that Enno mentioned sometime ago is now Roon, this will be an alternative to Sooloos.

glizzE has just re-posted [in our Roon forum] some comments from Danny on the initial Roon ECO system. It's well worth a read.

Regards,
Carl

Getting Tidal in 2.2 is a huge deal. Getting MQA in 2.x will also be a huge deal. Did you have to pay for those updates?