Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos Ongoing Development

Roon has been in development for a couple of years. The vast majority of that time as part of M; now spun out as a separate entity and team I.e. Roon.
I doubt very much that the Sooloos team at HQ were developing a.n.other system that will become Sooloos 3 at the same time. If they have then they have been doing it very much underground I would say.

John B indicated some cool tweaks that will come to Sooloos 2.2, but, if you are expecting big changes like track level data then I would be pretty surprised.

Roon and HQ are working on how to get the best of both worlds.

Agreed... Roon [which was Sooloos 3 until about 2 months ago IMHO] is the product of Thousands of manhours of work

And with the Roon guys having only left Meridian about 6 weeks ago, it will be borderline impossible for Meridian to replicate this level of Design and Implementation in anything less than 12-18 months IMHO

And even that would assume that they have the DESIRE to undertake such a task... the parting of the ways between Meridian and Roon was an amicable one and I get the impression that Meridian want to continue to work in tandem with Roon... rather than having to invest a minimum of hundreds of thousands in order to COMPETE with Roon

The Meridian guys know where their strengths lie... i.e. [Sound Quality and Endpoints that achieve that]... never mind bringing paradigm shifting new formats to the music industry in MQA

And equally they know that the Roon guys strengths lie in delivering Software that appeals to the Music Enthusiasts out there... who want to listen to their music, but LEARN about it as they listen as well [if the mood strikes]

IMHO, those expecting a Roon type of product... or Track level metadata... from Meridian in the short or even medium term, will be left very disappointed

Software Design was not a core strength of Meridian before their 2008 takeover of Sooloos... and it's very unlikely to suddenly become a core strength now that Elvis [in the form of Roon] has left the building

As Nick says, these two companies are very strong in their respective areas... and are in a position to provide all of us HH's with what IMHO will be the best of both worlds

Thanks for the info, guys.

If that's true, it seems like an odd way to do business, though? If I were Meridian, and these guys had been developing this while working on my payroll, with money at least party garnered from Sooloos sales, I'd have made them sign a contract with rights to whatever they produced during that time - if they then wanted to split, they could then go develop something from the ground up, not what they'd been producing while they were working for me?

Seems very odd for M to pay them to develop something which then doesn't benefit M or their customers more directly, and leaves us having to face a large payment for something that, until recently, was promised as in the works as a Sooloos upgrade, doesn't it?

We don't know they didn't get rights on the new software, they certainly didn't give all they development away. I would expect somthing special for Sooloos for those that want an off the shelf solution that ties in with existing Meridian hardware.
It may not be all that Roon is and will be, but it will be perfect for those that want it.
Pure speculation on my part, should I take my rose tinted shades off yet?
Nah, summers comin' Chris

None of us will ever be privy to the commercial parting of the ways between Meridian and Roon

Given that there are intelligent people on both sides, one can only imagine that both parties arrived at a mutually acceptable agreement, which suited both Teams' business goals moving forward

I'll repost something I said about 2 weeks ago that you likely missed......you mention a "large payment" for Roon.......while the ~£325 [or ~£77 p.a.] is nothing to sniff at, it must be remembered that we all paid a lot more than that for the Sooloos UI part of the Sooloos range... it was never a separate cost that we could identify........but I think we all know it was inherently higher than any of the prices quoted above

For example, only 2 weeks ago if you wanted a fully functional UI capable of Editing... or checking Album Picks... or many other functions, then your only choice was the £4,750 Control 15... suffice it to say that there is a significant "contribution" towards software in there

Ronnie, I totally agree, and that's my point entirely - having already paid very handsomely for the hidden software development cost of Sooloos, I'd like to see the results of that development in... Sooloos!

In other words, I think it would be great if Roon were an option for those who really want such a system, rather than something folks feel they should necessarily have to buy into to get certain features that we were assured were coming to Sooloos fairly imminently. Basically, I hope Chris' rose tinted speculation is correct!

In terms of cost, don't forget it's not just the subscription cost of Roon it's potentially the cost of a new PC/Mac (say a Mac Mini, etc) if you don't already own something suitable. Personally I'd also include the aspect of an MC200 becoming largely redundant - yes I could use it as an endpoint, but I won't, and if it ends up being storage only that's a very expensive little NAS - it was bought because, at the time, just pre-Qnap, it was the cheapest way to add core+store.

In any case, this is pure speculation at this point, and we need to see what happens before coming to conclusions - maybe Sooloos will add a few nice features soon, make everyone happy, and then any potential misgivings don't exist!

Danny on their Roon community site keeps talking about him hoping that Meridian do the right thing especially with his 'baby', the C10/15. He/someone also acknowledges elsewhere that Roon is no turnkey system and that it is possible that someone else will do that.

So joining the dots, it would not surprise me if Meridian came up with a licensed turnkey package for Roon that would satisfy those owners that wanted an 'M' badge on their kit.

I think it would be fair to say that Sooloos 3 was never going to be Sooloos 2.1+, but a completely different system, ie Roon. So M licensing Roon under their own name would be a welcome benefit to some especially if it ran on existing hardware and Roon cost was subsidised. As Danny says, he hopes Meridian do the right thing.

Ian, if that were the case, I'd be happy with that.

I'm pretty sure Roon will not run on Win XP which is what C15/10 runs on. So, OS change is needed.

In time there will be several options for OS. Maybe a pre-loaded HDD swap out for the C10/C15 might be an option. Clearly will have a cost but if M (or someone) can update the OS and load Roon to run effectively on the existing hardware then it might be a pit-stop type change.

SSD would be favourable too.

Indeed... and then there will the costs associated with making the necessary changes to the UI to substitute for the Swipe plus Multi-Touch plus Gestures that are possible with today's Capacitive screens [as opposed to not being available on the Resistive screen of the C1x]

All these functions would now need to be replaced with Icons... e.g. Left & Right arrows to replace the Swipe gesture in order to scroll thru the Album Browse screen

I meant to add that a RAM Upgrade would also be required in order to run the app smoothly......pretty sure the amount of Ram in the C1x is pretty small

How much virtual memory does ROON typically use? Is it 64bit or running a different approach to allow large data sets?