I also would opt for an AU/VST option. It’s mainly the reason I have to switch to VOX-player during my mastering sessions. This way I can add analysers and metering to check streaming services, original recordings and even radio streams. Short term LUFS for instance is something we use more than dynamic range metering and is not implemented in Roon Labs at the moment.
Support for plugins would be very helpful. Sonarworks has a GREAT plugin that can correct headphones/rooms, but their standalone program won’t work with a networked NAA. A plugin for Roon (using the Sonarworks plugin software) is the only way to get it into the signal chain.
@Brian commented on this a long time ago: the VST plugin architecture comes from the old single-box style of computing, so the plugin that has the purpose of doing audio processing also does GUI. That does not work in Roon, where audio processing is done in the Core, which often has no display and in any case nobody is looking at it. And even if Roon could do a major rearchitecture and put audio processing in the endpoint, often those don’t have UI either. The only device that has UI is the remote, and no audio passes through there.
VST would have to be rearchitected for modern distributed systems.
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I still use Roon only for the interface. But I have to output to Jriver over ASIO and let Jriver finish things due to Roon’s DSP limitations which are:
- Roon’s Convolver is broken in certain routing configurations and nothing has been done to fix it.
- I use a .VST called perfect declipper with out which I can’t listen to clipped modern music.
- Roon has no method to loopback to ensure the convolver is working as intended.
I bought Roon early on because I hoped that someday a beautiful interface would mature into more sophisticated playback software. In some ways it has improved. In other ways it is still far behind other software.
Flexibility is very important because there are many 3rd party applications about which Roon should be careful to ensure compatibility. The greater the compatibility, the more potential new customers Roon will have.
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There are actually ways to host VST plugins on headless systems, for example MrsWatson. IIRC, you can use MrsWatson to interrogate the available plugin parameters, including the acceptable range of values for each parameter, and set those. So, it seems entirely feasible to build generic UI in Roon for controlling plugin parameters and host those plugins on the core.