I think it will be fine, Roon can be the niche of niche.
It is still the best for Classical I imagine and maybe that is why they focus on Classical in the 1.8 update. They know themselves well.
Worst comes to worst, if the 100,000 niche users becomes 50,000, they can double the monthly subscription. There is always a way to charge niche price to niche users.
I tried Apple a couple of day ago and imported about 3500 classical tracks. What I got on the UI resembled 3500 card pick up. I immediately saw no need to continue, and deleted it and iTunes. After trying both Apple and Audivana’s new offerings this week, my admiration for Roon is magnitudes higher. Yeah, there will always be room for improvement, but they get it so much more right that anyone else I have found, and they can quote me on that!
Yes, classical is still Roons niche.
My music is all over the place, covering all genres except rap, opera and hip hop, and every decade from the 1910s on. Classical accounts for about 1.3% of everything. Even though it’s a very small amount of my library, I want it done right. For someone like me, and my 300k track library, Roon is miles ahead of anyone else. They get a solid B+ (and get slightly better with each update.). Everything else I have tried gets an F- (in a good mood, maybe an F+). If my library was maybe 10k, I might sing a different tune. Who knows? But for me and my needs, Roon scored a knockout on the very first punch.
Although we all know Apple does the walled garden thing, the full fat Apple Music has been available on Android for several years now. It was one of the main reasons I got it and it syncs up perfectly with my Apple Music on my iPad. So they at least know that making it available outside of Apple hardware has a business case.
The there’s also the API for web client that was mentioned above. I’ve been using it on https://musi.sh/ for maybe 6 months now and there’s also https://themusic.io/ that does the same and maybe 1-2 other decent implementations of 3rd party Apple Music web clients.
It’s a long shot, but it’s already outside of the cage, so it’s not completely hopeless~:rainbow:
How has this insightful thread on Roon integration with Spotify, Apple, and Amazon not devolved into an MQA discussion? People are really dropping the ball!
I’m an Apple addict, Apple Music subscriber, along with Qobuz.
I welcome their announcement but on this matter imho :
It’s long gone since they care for the crazy ones : they won’t allow high res purchases & limits iTunes Match to AAC, restricts to their sole products all the work they do on Apple Digital Masters and Dolby Atmos Music, killed airport express, removed optical out from Apple TV, puts efforts to erase headphone jack, etc.
It’s all about proposing an ever more appealing but closed environment, serving an ever higher position over competitors while already sitting on top, and certainly not in the direct intend of the greater good of humanity audiophiles.
If they care, I bet they’ll remove Roon from their equation rather than offer an opening.
I wish they would have a more open approach of their cleverness. Luckily, they haven’t embrace MQA.
PS : I guess Apple support for Sonos could be an antitrust thing
PPS : I also wonder, as highlighted by others earlier, if they do really care for lossless audio
As I said earlier (you also referenced this) Apple doesn’t actually care about lossless / audio quality.
Here is what they do care about; advantages over their largest competitor.
Spotify doesn’t have Spatial audio. Apple is very aware of how little difference high resolution makes (see countless threads on even this, a hifi forum, of people actually having to debate and show graphs just to prove there is a difference). In the consumer space, if you have to point to graphs and argue with a customer about the supposed merits of your technology, it doesn’t have value.
What does have value is a technology that immediately presents itself to the customer as different. There is zero debate that there is a change, it can be up to the individual whether they prefer it or not but there is zero discussion and zero graphs on whether it is different.
This is spatial audio. Regardless of how anyone on this forum feels about its merits I have seen the “wow factor” that it illicits from people who play music from their phone speakers. Dolby Atmos is a game changer because its an advancement in audio technology that any consumer can notice and in the cases I have seen, greatly desire.
Spotify does not have this, they have a massive install base, larger than anyone else and more damningly, a free tier. This matters when you are going triple the amount of data you potentially have to stream to those people. The free users matter because Spotify does not make any money off those users, its considered a gateway to a premium sub but it is not profitable. They won’t stream high res to them but the cost of them plus the cost of the additional bandwidth required for lossless and the storage costs add up.
Apple just dealt a double whammy. Spotify now can’t charge for the increase in costs of these lossless subs and they have adopted a technology Spotify is behind on, that is popular with consumers.
How do I know Apple doesn’t care about audio quality? Well as pointed out earlier in this thread they aren’t allowing people to pay them for lossless files, they aren’t upgrading them and their own products don’t support High Res.
They only care about Spatial audio, that technology requires lossless:
https://developer.dolby.com/technology/dolby-audio/dolby-truehd/
Spatial audio is why Apple is supporting lossless. This has nothing to do with resolution or bit depth.
If anyone used Tidal’s compare lossless vs compressed test, all over YouTube people showing they couldn’t hear a difference.
Atmos has their own:
Everyone will be able to hear a difference.
I don’t think lossless is mandatory : it’s already there, you can listen to it already on Apple Music, for instance with Billie Eilish concert at Steve Jobs Theatre, with AirPods Pro and an iDevice.
It’s very impressive and I wonder if a classic 2ch hifi setup could benefit from it ?
Me too. ITunes/ Apple Music fell at the first hurdle for me my collection is all flac. I don’t want it to transcode anything. If it can’t deal with my files as is it’s a non starter.
Spatial audio works on 2 channels brilliantly and it scales up so if you have more than 2 channels, it sounds even better.
I thought for the Billie eilish concert you had to use the Apple TV plus AirPods to get the spatial audio?
Plus that is a video format, different format. The AAC limitation only applies to music files on apple devices.
I have 5200 DSD files, and almost 295K flac. Convert?? I think I’ll convert the free trial offer into a resounding NO!.. During my four hour trial, I was on the phone to their customer service for almost an hour because I couldn’t get any sound. The support guy did not know what a DAC was, or after I explained to him what it was, what “restarting the DAC” meant. If he doesn’t get the basics, how can he give support??? Duhhhhh!!
Also tried Amazon again today. Just as bad. Could not successfully Chromecast at all without dropping and what sounded like resampling , Roon can Chromecast to some decide the same tracks and it played with no issues. It did look like they may now be allowing HD and UltraHD via Chromecast on the Amazon app as it doent switch source anymore like it used to, but via Chromecast it gives you non of the extra information like it does playing back locally so hard to tell. When it did play it sounded pretty good so maybe it is but of it can’t maintain a steady stream it’s useless.
Maybe being a video it’s different, I don’t know.
Spatial Audio doesn’t work on Apple TV with AirPods , only on iDevices, and Spatial Audio is not supported on the latest Apple TV either with AirPods. I don’t get it of course, it’s largely discussed if you search for this on google. Maybe, let’s hope, it will come with a tvOS update but me being septical.
Nice to know it can theoretically work with a classic hifi setup, thanks, looking forward for futur offers.
The spatial audio on the Apple TV stuff on iPhone is just tracking your head in 3D space (when you turn right you can only hear sound from the left channel).
It’s not the same as Dolby Atmos (it’s apples own technology). The audio you actually hear doesn’t sound like it’s taking place in 3D space. It’s more like I’m sitting further away from a traditional stereo pair of speakers. Whereas Atmos creates a sphere of audio, you can hear sounds in front, left, right, above and behind. It’s also not limited to 2 channels.
It’ll be cool to hear when it’s supported in Apple Music running through an Atmos receiver and proper speakers.
I think for your case with a large private DSD library, you should stay with Roon, that is exactly Roon’s niche.
For most other people, ask themselves these questions:
how many of their collection CANNOT be found on Apple/Spotify?
If there is a Lossless/Hires/Spatial Copy of this available to stream, is it really essential to play the local file instead of just stream from Apple Music/Spotify?
While you are mobile, do you want to play these music Which is available from Apple Music/Spotify (but not on Roon)?
Doesn’t it feel better if you can use the same interface to your music when you are mobile as well as home?
Do you want to be able to play Apple Music/ Spotify by voice command?
If you answer not many/yes to these questions, you can do better without Roon.
I think it was not the right way to test Apple Music by uploading your library. It is a streaming service, you shouldn’t need to be uploading. The function is there and as you have found out, it sucks. But uploading is not the point of Apple Music. You shouldn’t need to upload in the first place.
I think the net effect of the new lossless stream movement is that, the niche of Roon is further subdivided, some users will find it redundant.
The best way for Roon to go forward is to strengthen its niche instead of competing with the streaming services like Apple and Spotify.
Integration with them won’t help Roon because it’s just fighting UI with Apple and Spotify. Unlike Qobuz and Tidal and Amazon, UI also happen to be Apple and Spotify’s strength as well. There is little Roon can do there.
Roon should focus all its energy on organising Local files/DSD/Classical cataloging which are actually their strength instead of wasting its developers time. They can’t win those battles.
IMHO, Roon’s UI is ten times better than Apple’s. And, as both Qobuz and Tidal have virtually the same number of tracks available to stream as Apple ( in the 70M+ range each), and Roon has multi room capability, I fail to see why there is any reason for anyone to switch to Apple , or even use it. What can Apple do that Roon can’t? Nothing from what I could see. What can Roon do that Apple can’t? Many things.
I think Roon has the edge in UI, but not night and day if you are not in their niche segment.
Tidal/Qobuz’s library does not compete with Apple Music and Spotify. Over the past three years I have many wish Apple/Spotify have lossless as there are way too many tracks I can’t find in Tidal/Qobuz but are available in Apple Music. The size of the library was the only reason I kept my Apple Music subscription alive alongside Tidal/Qobuz. I can also recall zero times I can’t find anything on Apple Music that I can find on Tidal/Qobuz.
Your mileage may vary but for me, Tidal/Qobuz library is very limited compared to the competition.
As of April 2021, published track totals were
Apple 75,000,000
Qobuz. 70,000,000+
Tidal. 70,000,000+
Spotify had 70.000.000 at the end of February 2021
For all intents and purposes they offer the same amount of tracks. Now, the genres they are strong in, or weak in, probably differs. I know for a fact that’s true with Qobuz and Tidal. Qobuz kills Tidal in Classical, Jazz and blues. And from what I’ve heard, Tidal kills Qobuz in hip hop (I wouldn’t know. I’ve never searched for Hip hop in my entire life). So, what we view as the service with the best selection is determined by what genres interest us, not by the total number of tracks available, and that’s cool. I totally respect those that prefer Apple, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, or whatever. I love that we have choices, as musical tastes differ so widely from person to person. And I wish that every one of you gets immense enjoyment from music, and from life.