Maybe that's partly why M let them go? WIth Sooloos M could only monetize their continued R&D through hardware sales. You need to equate the cost of a Sooloos (Core) product as two elements: the cost of the hardware; and a lifetime subscription to free Sooloos updates (or until M went bust/stopped developing/switched off the metadata).

If M underestimated the value of the latter then they'd start losing money (or not making as much profit) on the whole business.

Roon have a much better shot at making it outside the closed architecture of M's hardware, and also have the luxury of knowing exactly what their revenues and expenditure are. They are attracting many multiples of subscribers over just ex Sooloos users, however they do need a turnkey solution for non techies. They're getting this from third party providers without the need to get over involved in hardware.

I wonder what percentage of Sooloos users have now switched to Roon? If I knew how to I could create a poll to get a small representative sample, but I'd guess on this forum that the result would overstate the % of switchers. Circa 100% of the members of this forum know of the existence of Roon whereas the real figure will be lower.

Sooloos, Roon, G series (with LPS upgrade), 800 series (with LPS upgrade), HD621, AC200, Prime and PS, DSPs old and new.

Purdeys, Moke, Leica, 'Blad. Only the best.