Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Hardware with Roon Application How Much Will Roon Cost?

Absolutely!

+1
/Marcus

Just thought that I would mention an option for those considering Roon. When I decided that my MD600 was not fit for the purpose of a resilient store I invested in a QNAP that offered me much better performance, flexibility and features at a significantly lower cost than Meridian despite me buying into the higher end of the QNAP SMB/SOHO product offering.

One of the features is a Virtualization Station. As a result for the cost of Roon itself and a Windows license Roon won't present me with any additional hardware costs over my Sooloos store as I can just spin up a virtual machine that will be more than adequate for the job and far more powerful than my MD600 core. After all regardless of selecting either Sooloos or Roon I would need a store anyway.

Given the suggested cost of Roon, even on a subscription license, the ameliorated cost over a period of 3 years (Slightly less than I have owned Sooloos for) will be significantly less and offer much better value for money than Sooloos ever was and I suspect ever will be. When you consider that the only real development of Sooloos in all that time was a bare minimum Tidal integration to keep pace with its competitors (I don't consider it the big deal that some do) if Roon advances its product in any worthwhile capacity over the next few years the comparative cost will offer significantly better value for money in my eyes than Sooloos.

Furthermore not being lucky enough to own an ID40/41 solution and given the doubt surrounding MQA and the MS600 I suspect that if I was a new entrant to streaming I could save a significant amount on a non Meridian Roon endpoint with very little, if any, loss in sound quality over Meridian. However this speculation remains to be proven.

Cheers,

Tony.

Hi Tony

The VM option on the QNAP's is an interesting idea, some of the SMB/SOHO models are quite well specced, i7 16GB RAM etc.

Cheers

Russ

PS: Same thoughts on the MD600.

A QNAP NAS with i7 and 16GB RAM isn't cheap, from my quick perusal of Amazon.

Personally I'd go NUC/Mac Mini and lower spec NAS. Probably cheaper still and this would allow me to upgrade the former to higher spec without the need to go through the potential aggro of changing the latter.

My i7 QNAP with 32GB memory and 256GB SSD was cheaper than my MD600 is quieter and does so much more except being able to act as a Sooloos core. Obviously there are cheaper options especially if you just want it for Roon duties and it's great that we have options at multiple price points including those less than a Sooloos entry system. However I still think that it's worth considering especially given the value for money that it offers me.

Obviously it may not be suitable for all but I think based on cost any criticisms are largely disengenious when you compare it to an MD600. Granted they may be more than just relevant when you compare it to an MC200 or MC600.

Cheers,

Tony.

256GB is not going to hold many albums, is it? So your cost comparison with the MD600 is going to have to add another NAS to the i7 QNAP unless your considering streaming only.

I don't disagree with you (having just sold my MD600 for QNAP) it's just you do need to factor everything else in. It's not dissimilar to those folks who say DSPs are way overpriced, yet ignore the extra cost of DACs, preamps, power amps and interconnects required when comparing to analogue speakers.

256GB is just the internal RAID 1 SSD cache. I added a pair of 480GB SSDs which I use for the VMs and ultimately Roon core. This brought the cost up to the equivalent of a disk less MD600. So I haven't factored in the costs of disks as they are the same regardless of which option is chosen.

However the QNAP supports a wider range of disks and even after adding my MD600 disks to the 480GB SSDs I would still have 6 spare drive bays for my money.

My cost comparison is more than fair. Especially since I could easily drop the SSD cache, 480GB array and reduce the memory from 32GB and still have a more capable, flexible, performant and cheaper system. Obviously it's not a complete like for like comparison since the QNAP lacks the advantages of a closed system such as Sooloos.

However I still think that it is a worthy consideration for Roon. For me the comparison with Sooloos only arose when Meridian chose to allow its use as a store and Roon arose with the potential to replace the core functionality as well. Of course if low cost resilient disk Sooloos is your goal you may be better off with an MC200 and a much cheaper 2 bay QNAP. You would of course gain an audio endpoint but I think this is probably a discussion for the Sooloos forum. My point for Roon still remains.

Cheers,

Tony.

According to the release.

Available online today, the service costs $119 per year, $499 for a lifetime subscription, and $999 for a planned Pro lifetime subscription for home-automation systems. -

If so, that's too much for the ability to simply play back my own music.

Over time, the total cost of ownership would make Sooloos the wiser option.

If you "just want to play back your own music", just get VLC. It's free.

I think that puts a price guide on Sooloos core component. OT but I wonder if Sooloos core on QNAP will be free or not?

Back on topic, any news if Roon will give a discount to existing Sooloos core owners? The split from M may have lost that option.