Not this year, I guess 
Hegel with a capital āHā died a long time ago, the hegel we talk about here has lost itās capital āhā a while ago for me.
I refuse to honor the brand hegel with a capital, they do not deserve that.
1 Like
Sorry for having been absent for so long. As I have said earlier we have been very close for a long time.
One of the reasons I usually havenāt told more of specific reasons or what is going on is that it has felt like excuses. I donāt like to āblame x y zā. It is our job to fix it regardless of āx y zā.
But I will try and shed some more light on where we stand. We chose a streaming solution before there were much talk of Roon. We chose one that is fairly inexpensive and that sounded really good on the features we imagined we would use it with. Choosing that allowed us to spend quite a bit more on components in other areas of the amps. This was particularly important on the less expensive models.
That worked absolutely fine for Spotify, Airplay etc.
Adding features on it requires outside help from the supplier of the streaming solutions. 2,5 years ago (or slightly more) we started the investigation on adding Roon to our feature set. It looked easy enough and time was scheduled to around 6 months. But here we are.
First there were some delays on our side getting started and as we finally got started, Covid started. That delayed the programming significantly at our streaming board supplier. Then finally, this winter we were really really close. We were certain we had it. Then we stumbled on an unforeseen memory issue. The memory in our boards filled up when using RAAT. Not Roonās fault, it was simply that our memory was on the low side. Roon has now helped us with this on their side (thank you very much). For a few months now the feedback I have is that there are only small tweaks left and the major fight is just that some of these tiny issues apparently requires a lot of hours to fix.
I talk to our developer team frequently and they say they are very confident that this will solve itself, and hopefully soon. It is the kind of things that can āmagicallyā solve themselves tomorrow or it can take a bit longer.
We have several times discussed and I have asked āif we dont think we can pull it off we must stop now and be honest with our customersā. The answer to that has always been a confident āwe can do itā.
I am really sorry for these delays. I wish I could give an absolute answer. But I still canāt.
Probably not the answer anyone was hoping for, but it is a little more light on where we stand and to show that I do follow this even though I dont answer so much.
12 Likes
@Anders_Ertzeid if itās taking years of full-time development with an unforeseen amount (maybe years) of further development why not just offer an upgrade to the board and be done with it. If what youāre saying is true this seems like a crazy way to run a business. Frankly Iām not sure you are telling the truth. But if you areā¦ frankly Iām not sure spending (allegedly) years of full-time work (with allegedly no end in sight) on developing this capability on a poorly constructed board is good business either.
Your story and your reasoning just donāt add upā¦ even from a business management / resource allocation perspective. There are companies who can write full operating systems in half the time youāve taken just trying to implement Roon. Something is seriously wrong at Hegel any way you look at this.
Thanks for shedding a little bit of light on the history of the project and where we are today, @Anders_Ertzeid. Speaking for myself only, but the lack of communication has been more frustrating than the lack of Roon Readiness. Many of us are very technical and welcome transparency about the specific obstacles to Roon Readiness that Hegel is working to overcome. At this point, do all of the remaining issues need to be addressed by Hegelās development team in the Hegel firmware, or is further work being done by the streaming board supplier to address any of the remaining issues?
It was never clear to me that any additional work was required on the part of the board supplier, and this makes me somewhat more sympathetic about the exceedingly long project timeline.
Totally agree with this, btw:
2 Likes
I was unclear. There havent been several continuous years of programming. There has been breaks for various reasons. Some covid related. Others not.
Otherwise I would obviously agree with you.
There are still some things that needs fixing by the external partner, unfortunately.
1 Like
This is absolutely true. Thanks for the update, @Anders_Ertzeid , but you really should be more active in this regard. People have paid thousands of euros for amps that donāt deliver what was promised. Most other companies wouldnāt get away with this, they would offer their costumers some compensation.
2 Likes
There are still some things that needs fixing by the external partner, unfortunately.
Hmm, that sounds different from what was very recently implied on the facebook group. How are users supposed to reconcile these conflicting statements?
It is the kind of things that can āmagicallyā solve themselves tomorrow or it can take a bit longer.
I donāt understand, you are saying you expect these bugs to just go away by themselves? without anyone patching the code to fix it???
In this infomercial piece on Darko you yourself have been quoted bragging about how superior Hegelās clever AirPlay implementation is. Now you are saying you are just using a cheap OEM as your streaming solution, so was that all ā ā ?
*I tried to squeeze further information from the horseās mouth about Hegelās AirPlay implementation but marketing manager Anders Ertzeid came back with, āI asked Bent [Holter] over a cup of coffee this morning. He coughed in his coffee and saidā¦ āaiaiaiā¦ that is a bit of a secret. But the biggest contributor to Hegelās implementation of AirPlay is correcting errors in the time domainā.
Same infomercial claims your genius founder oversees development of streaming software in assembly:
Holter is Hegelās CEO and product designer. At their Oslo HQ, visited by yours truly in February, he also oversees an in-house software team that writes code for the streaming boards. Not Linux but a custom OS made of pure assembly code.
So which one is it @Anders_Ertzeid
3 Likes
@Anders_Ertzeid strongly suggest that you guys need to just replace the boards with a proper one and move on. Iād also suggest you guys do some serious soul searching at Hegel regarding how you have deceived your clients on an ongoing basis, made poor design choices to begin with, and cannot seem to implement a solution in a realistic time frame. Itās sad to watch this disaster continue. And still no end in sight! W+F?
6 Likes
I have followed all of these Hegel threads with much interest but this latest turn of statements from Hegel is just mind boggling and surely should be their death blow as it simply is outrageous, unconscionable and downright disgraceful!
7 Likes
So a Ā£5k hegel amp has less processing power and memory than a Ā£30 Raspberry Pi 3B (which can run Roon Bridge quite happily)?
9 Likes
This whole Hegel Roon fiasco reminds me of Emotivaās RMC-1 Dirac Live fiasco that was postponed for almost 2 years and at the end Emotiva had to pull out an external Pi4 box to run Dirac Live externally as the RMC-1 didnāt have enough internal memory/power to run Dirac Live. Maybe Hegel can do the sameā¦ā¦
Wow!..I feel completely like the guy who bought the snake oil. Hegel has confirmed every Audiophiles nightmare ā¦low quality products used in what is supposed to be a high end product. Iām guessing the truth is coming out because of the impending lawsuits in Europe which Iām sure will happen in the US.
They need to bite the Bullitt and provide some type of board upgrade(no charge) due to the deception on their part or class action suits are in order. Any Lawyers reading this are welcome to get the ball rolling.
2 Likes
Needed to add thisā¦better sell your Hegel products while you can, I think they will be a defunct company after this fiasco. Karma is a you know what and she doesnāt like liars.
2 Likes
Sorry, Guy_Midgleyā¦But I will keep My Hegel H190 that I recently purchased. With or without Roon Readiness, I for one love the the power and sound out of it, Yes I would really like it to be RR, and I truly Believe that with all this Covid-19 ā ā ā ā ā itās put a hold on the progress of every aspect of all business. Thanks Anders for the effort of trying to keep your customers in check, with the progress!!
Cheers!
2 Likes
Thatās good. 
There is a simple rule: never buy a computer or any other consumer electronics for what it is promised to do in the future, as that future may never arrive. Make your purchasing decision based on what it does today. If you get an update/upgrade in the future, thatās an extra bonus that will hopefully delight you!
5 Likes
If a future product property guaranteed at the time of purchase is not actually delivered, and the reasons are not relevant, this is a breach of contract. This results in claims for the buyer that can be sued. Quite simple.
Ideally, the manufacturer is given a reasonable deadline for rectification. If there is no improvement in the desired sense, I will hand this over to my lawyer.
3 Likes
I donāt understand what exactly Hegel is thinking. They simply beat the drum around and announced that their amp will be Roon ready when in reality they have had difficulty delivering it. As an owner of the 590, Hegel will be a brand that I will avoid moving forward!