Hi,
I purchased Arcam ST25. Before, I contacted Arcam in Poland, and they told me it would be ready after the firmware update. I upgraded firmware to the latest version and Roon still says uncertified. What is wrong with it?
Hi,
I purchased Arcam ST25. Before, I contacted Arcam in Poland, and they told me it would be ready after the firmware update. I upgraded firmware to the latest version and Roon still says uncertified. What is wrong with it?
It isn’t showing on the Roon partner page yet
As for now only ST5 streamer from new Radia series is Roon Ready.
ST25 most likely will be certified once SA35 and SA45 integrated amps will be available, both models arrival date was postponed already as it was due in October and November respectively
They redacted their previous statement. Just a few days ago, it mentioned that the product would be Roon Ready upon release, but now it says “coming soon”. On the Polish website, however, it still claims to be Roon Ready, and they stated that it is Roon Ready when I called them. This feels deliberately misleading to me as a customer.
I reached out to UK Arcam, and they informed me that they would implement Roon compatibility in Q1 2025. Interestingly, they also told me that my ST25 is fully functional. Well, that’s true except for one of its core functions. If I’m not mistaken, both Roon and Arcam are under the Harman umbrella, yet they still haven’t managed to make it work, even after delaying the release by three months. This is quite disappointing.
This was my first and last purchase of this company’s gear, despite everything else being fantastic. The design is great, it switches seamlessly between different streaming sources, and the remote control works without any issues. However, releasing unfinished products and then redacting information on the website is unacceptable.
Few months to get it certified doesn’t sound too bad unless it will be delayed again, but of course it is better to have it fully spec’d on purchase date.
For some brands it takes years or doesn’t happen at all.
I’m looking forward to demo of SA45 once available, and it looks promising seeing you happy with your streamer from a gear point of view.
Would you mind posting couple pictures of it?
I own an Arcam SA30 and have been very happy with its Roon Ready (and the sound production).
It was already Roon Ready when I purchased it, but in truth they haven’t been great with Firmware Updates, but thankfully it sounds great, so it sort of makes up for the lack of software development.
Hopefully you will get Roon Ready soon and then forget the issues before that
Thank you!
Indeed very well made unit, looks really great.
Arcam SA45 and SA35 should be available in February 2025.
Hopefully Roon Ready certification for both amps and ST25 streamer will be completed by then.
Fingers crossed.
Hello Adam,
Your ST25 looks great. Can you answer a question for me that no one else can so far? Does the ST25 support MQA? The ST5 does, but there is no mention of it on the new model. And a FYI for you, despite Tidal saying they have dropped it, there are still loads of albums on there in the MQA format and many of them sound very good IMHO.
Cheers,
Leigh
It does not mention MQA anywhere. How can I check it? I have Tidal. Please give me an example album and explain what to do.
No probs. I am also a Tidal user. It should be easy to try. A really good album example is Aaron Neville’s album “Bring It On Home…The Soul Classics”. If the Arcam is Roon ready, you can enable MQA for it by going into Roon Settings->Audio find the Arcam and choose “Device Setup” and then under “MQA capabilities” choose “Decoder and renderer”. It should also help in your Roon configuration for the Tidal service to set “Streaming Quality” to “Max”. But if Roon Ready isn’t quite there yet for the Arcam, perhaps try playing the album above from Tidal itself and see what you get. Very interested to know what the results are of your test.
Arcam is not Roon Ready yet. In the Tidal app, this album is shown as High quality, which I get during the playback via Tidal Connect. For the R.E.M. - Automatic For The People album, I can pick Max quality.
Also, Arcam displays different bit rates and depths when playing the R.E.M.'s album with High and Max quality. I have no idea, if it is MQA, though.
Blue Coast Music store has created a free download site with multiple high res formats including MQA, it might be worth giving a try if ST25 supports USB playback.
Also David Elias - $1 Sampler on Bandcamp looks interesting as it is available in variety of Studio Masters encoded with MQA from 16/44.1 to 24-bit 352.8kHz sample rate.
Awesome, thanks. I downloaded samples from Blue Coast Music. Arcam ST25 played all 10 files from USB. DSD files worked terribly, though. There was more noise than actual music. It is easily audible and visible in my RME’s spectrum analyzer. It does not happen during playback from PC, so I gues it is an issue with the Arcam. MQA file worked fine.
RME only supports DoP for DSD from Linux which the streamer will be based one and it looks like the Arcam is converting it according to the Display. Or perhaps thats encoding to DoP? Hard to tell. What does Roons signal path show for the DSD files?
It was played from Arcam’s USB input, not Roon, as Arcam ST25 is not Roon Ready. Playback worked fine from my Windows PC, but I just recalled that it converts digital output. Thus, I am unsure if this noise was Arcam’s or RME’s fault. However, there is no noise when I use Roon to stream these DSD files to a HiFiBerry Digi+ endpoint and then send the signal to RME. I can also test with a Macbook. I am not sure if it can send DSD natively via USB, though. Or maybe I should simply Connect Arcam with Teac Amp directly via analog? Then it should be clear if it’s Arcam’s fault or not as RME will be omitted in the signal path.
EDIT: When the Arcam is connected to Amp directly via analogue, the noise is gone. Looks like RME’s issue then.
The arcam will be using a Linux os all these devices do to some degree. Does the Arcam support DoP for DSD content out of the USB. The RME won’t play native DSD from non windows machines. As your hearing noise this indicates it’s outputting a format DAC can’t decode.
Thank you for continuing the testing Adam and sharing your results. I noticed too that using the Tidal interface, it didn’t show the finer details about the music format that was being played. Also, as Roon readiness is not there yet, of course we cannot compare what you are seeing with my current experience. But, it is a positive sign that you were able to play the downloaded MQA file. I presume that you still weren’t able to see anything on the Arcam display that indicated you were using an MQA file? As an example, I currently have a Pro-Ject Audio Streamer/DAC combination and that indicates MQA on the display when they are playing …