Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Is Roon Doomed Like Sooloos?

If that was the case, I would feel strongly compelled to justify iPod, Squeezebox, Sonos, Sooloos and Roon.

So here goes

iPod - first foray into music streaming. Great alternative to carrying CD's on long journeys, but storage was expensive so I ripped a limited amount of my most played albums to MP3. Was not a replacement for CD's.

Squeezebox - same limitation for storage, but repurposed the music library I had already ripped. Nice UI and digital out so for convenience, I could use it instead of playing CD's. But didn't change how I listened to things. Bought a dedicated PC to run Squeezeserver.

Sonos - starting augmenting original MP3's with lossless FLAC so better quality, but still no replacement for DVD-A and some CD's. Not needing dedicated server was good and multiple zones was nice. But quality did not give what I wanted and was missing hires.

Sooloos - gave me hires and changed the way that I listened to music allowing it to pick some of my tracks, until some of the functionality was removed. But it was a standalone box which I left switched off for much of the time.

Sooloos 5 - I was an alpha tester from when it was to be next gen Sooloos. This eventually became Roon. I felt it didn't improve much on what I already had and I couldn't see through the constant changes and missing features so I quit the alpha program as I felt that I could not give it the attention that it needed. But it did get me thinking about how things should work, especially wrt how I listen to music.

Roon - I really held off committing to this until late last year. I wanted to see how it evolved from when I alpha tested Sooloos 5 and how it improved on what Sooloos offered me. The trigger was its support of my legacy Sonos kit. I wished that I had jumped ship earlier as, purchasing a low power dedicated box, I was happy to leave it running 24/7. Which meant that I now had music on demand. Basically, Roon gave me the best of everything that I had before, and more besides, all in a nice seamlessly integrated package. The only criticism, lack of volume integrating with F80 whilst maintaining full resolution output - and that shortcoming is built into (or not as the case may be) the F80.

I could use free or cheap solutions, and indeed have done for stop gaps, but it is so nice to have a package that is robust (only had one issue ever with Roon, fixed with reboot of core), flexible and just works nicely (albeit not always intuitively). Thanks to Ratbert and his quickstart assistance and about 30 minutes of my time, I can now just enjoy listening to the music and a much more diverse variety than I previously did. Oh, and not have to keep procrastinating on what options are out there and whether I made the right choice; priceless. I should have done it when Roon first came out, then it would have more than paid for itself by now.

A self-fulfilling argument/justification.

Meridian could have chosen to replace Sooloos with Roon Essentials - a 'free' version that is limited to 30k tracks. That would be plenty for many people.

Pity that it's limited to just one device on the marketplace.

It is a little more restricted than just 30k tracks.... as this post from the Roon forum says.

I bought a Nucleus + after trying Roon for a while on a Mac Mini. It cost less than any of the MC200, MD600, 2x TwinStores (and even my 596 or 561M).

Sooloos software may have been free but the kit only came with M's I.P. tax heavily included so the cost of Roon and the variety of equipment it works with is not, IMO, extortionate. Pink Floyd's 'Early Years ' boxset alone cost almost the same.

For alternatives, JRiver is pretty good and has the bonus of doing audio and video and after the initial charge works out at about £25 per year JRiver Media Center

~M~

+1

I find it interesting that software seems to be worth less to some people than hardware when it does the same thing; and often better.

The physical hardware entity of a piece of equipment is probably a fraction of the overall equipment cost, but when you remove that hardware entity and replace it with a piece of software, for some the overall cost seems to need to have to be reduced by a disproportionate amount. If a piece of audio kit cost £5k and the hardware costs were £1k of that, even though a piece of software could perform the same, if not better, and software development costs similar, or more, £400 suddenly seems expensive to them.

Or more succinct, to some, software, or probably more accurately the value of software developers time is deemed almost worthless.

To some, the value of musicians’ talent is deemed almost worthless in listening to their works via the likes of Spotify et al.

This is interesting, as a Tidal subscriber I am contributing more than Apple Music which you seem to favour? 😇

Some software is free and a result of collaborative work. Win win.

This is a decade old too. For half of that decade 'updates' were very infrequent/non-existant on the Sooloos platform. I'm sure when the original Sooloos gang joined up with M they found it funny, as we did on the Hiker's factory tour, that M staff used Squeezeboxes everywhere for background listening! ... good, basic software and reasonably priced hardware lol.

I seem to recall that Tidal and Deezer and Tunein were seperately subscribable options on a Sooloos system at one time too as Tidal and Qobuz are with Roon so if you compare just Sooloos software against Roon software Roon certainly 'looks' more polished. Many other products proudly boast of their integration possiblities as here with Amarra and interesting discussions also available on AudiophileStyle

At the end of the day, it's what feels or sounds good to you that counts.

~M~

Someone please send me a 818v3 so that I can compare with my DigiOne Signature powered by Allo's new Shanti LPS (with which I am very pleased). PM for shipping address.