You know that about me? Seriously?!?!?!
I could say a lot about what I “know” about you, but I wouldn’t be impudent enough to do that.
Let me correct the misdirected worries you may have by listing the reality of the situation:
- There is always risk of us being acquired – the offers come more often than you know. You need to accept these offers as an eventuality for any company you know that makes something interesting. We’ve turned them all down so far. That’s not to say we won’t be acquired, but right now we see a vision of Roon’s future and courters so far haven’t seen it.
- You are only looking at software release notes, which is a very small subset of our business partnerships that require software updates to fulfill. We have dedicated partner programs that bring dozens of other companies into our ecosystem without software updates.
- You are only looking at recent software release notes. I can tell because you mentioned HQPlayer explicitly as a partnership you’d like. You’ve totally missed the partnership that we have had with HQPlayer for since 2015.
- You are missing all the announcements about Roon Ready Partners that ship much more often than partnerships via release notes.
- Sooloos was sold to Meridian because hardware was/is expensive to make, it was our only business back then, and we ran into cash flow issues during a terrible financial period (2008). Had it been any other year, we wouldn’t have needed to sell. This time, we have built a software business on top of a very different consumer hardware ecosystem (just as a reference, Sooloos started pre-iPhone!). We are treading carefully into hardware. It helps a lot to have lived through failure.
I’m happy if you disagree on where we are headed, but please try to be less presumptuous. We are here, active in the forums and very open about how we do business. There is no reason to jump to conclusions when you can just ask.
This partnership was an experiment in pushing the industry forward. We welcome more manufacturers to contribute here, similar to the Roon Tested program. We also invite manufacturers to provide filters for more than just their own headphone brands.
Headphones are one of those things where DSP can be used very effectively and I would argue that every manufacturer should always release multiple curves along with their hardware. It’s unfortunate that manufacturers stop the work at delivery of hardware. The good manufacturers are much more capable of extending the sonic improvement of their products even further.