I would like to see a licensing option to be able to run one of my Mac’s as a second server without having to pay double the price. I have an iMac that I had been running Audirvana on with a local library. I have a Mac mini that I run on my home theater that I keep the same library on. I seem to have issues with one of the other going to sleep no matter what power settings I use so it is a pain to have connection problems with the remote unit to the library.
It would be nice to have the option to use both as servers and not have this issue and pay a charge, not a full second license, for this. That seem to be extreme to me. This would also help people who have libraries on a home unit and a laptop and allow for them to take the laptop out and have their music on it.
You buy Office 365 and several other software as a subscription services and they usually allow you to run the software on a specified number of computers. I would be willing to pay more for this but not double the price. I would think this would be a win/win in that you would get more revenue and the end user would get flexibility. As it stands now there are probably users like me that would pay you more but cannot afford double the price. Another idea would be to include this at no charge on the lifetime license.
Rightfully so? I agree that it is not wrong to charge extra but charging double does not seem to be fair to me. What is wrong with wanting an affordable price to make the 2nd mac actually reliable and not have connection dropouts, wireless dropouts, sleep issues and such? This makes the customer experience more satisfying and you don’t feel like you are getting gouged by doubling the already significant price for this software…
Go research it yourself, there are many software as a subscription product that are very popular that make allowance for this. Office 365 is one. I am not seeing it should be free but requiring two times the fee to have two pc’s or Mac’s in a household seems to be punative to me.
Have you stopped to consider the economics? Has it occured to you that Roonlabs needs to remain viable and provide an adequate return and standard of living to its owners and employees for you to continue enjoying it, and that perhaps, just perhaps, Roonlabs is not possessed of the financial resources of the likes of Microsoft? Seriously, all of you decrying the price and/ or licensing arrangements need a reality check.
Your point does not hold water. I am sure there are some users that would pay a higher fee per month, say 13.50 per month, to be able to play music files that are actually on the hard drive of the second computer. But, doubling the price is too expensive, so you don’t do it. Roon gets 10.00 a month from me instead of 13.50. which would have been a 35% increase in revenue from me and other customers like me.
The whole idea of the remote devices is to be able to play you library on the second computer. Why should it cost double the price to play local files on the second computer? Doesn’t cost them anything and they gain extra revenue and offer a reasonable product and price to their customers. Again, how high of a quality product and how much value do they want to offer their subscribers, Again, not asking for free, just asking for reasonable, It costs them nothing.
I guess competitors such as Audirvana don’t matter on this? Audirvana,which I currently own, allows installation on two computers. You are also not taking into account that you can actually decrease revenues by having some prices too high. There may be increased revenue, thus viability by offering a discount like this to their customers.
Again, I think your average customer cannot afford double but would be willing to pay a higher price. I think it is good to offer customers a choice at a good value and increase reliability of the product. I manage a large network team for a large healthcare organization and running things over wireless and streaming is not as reliable as using local files. I just want a reliable remote machine that is not a pain in the ass due to something network related or such always coming in.
There are additional costs for Roon with a second licence being additional license fees payable to metadata providers etc. I don’t know what the economics of it is, but Roon has to pay those other companies on a licence/server basis.
Now that makes sense if they are charged per connection. I wish they could figure out a way for the remote client to play local files and pull metadata from the one server.
I don’t agree with this assessment. I think the average user of Roon could indeed afford double or treble the cost if they wanted. But, we are both guessing at what the “average” user of Roon can or cannot afford. I am sure that the Roon guys did the proper due diligence to determine pricing.
I disagree, if the economics were that the market would bear this charge for this software then that would be the selling price. This is wonderful software and I am glad I paid the subscription price but it is only worth do much. I don’t know why you think that customers would pay that much for a music library player/wonderful metadata program when other subscription products such as office 365 and creative cloud do not cost near that. Those are wonderful programs too, in the case of office very necessary to many people. Again, I just do not feel it is worth double the price to be able to play local files on my second Mac. I have been bragging to friends about this software and everyone of them make comments about it being a little expensive. They are not audiophiles or music nuts like I am so I guess the price is a little steep for them. Audirvana and Adobe lightroom are wonderful programs too but they let me put in on two computers. But if they are charged for metadata per server then I understand.
Broadly I agree with Tim, though I think if you take a look around, you can find a spectrum of licensing examples. Ranging from those who licence for as many devices in a single location / as a user has, usually explicitly excluding commercial/educational use, through a specified maximum number of devices, all the way to one licence per device.
It feels to me like the one licence/one device model has reduced in use over recent years and software developers as a group have moved some way along the spectrum, towards the per location / user model.
I can’t ever recall seeing a per location agreement that prevented you from using the application whilst away from that location temporarily - a common laptop use of course. Presumably the software vendors who use this model, accept that a % of users will take advantage of the situation and effectively pirate one or more copies.
Given how open and pragmatic the Roon team are - as evidenced by the content / quality of the posts in the forum, I believe that their tendency would be towards an open / multi-device / trust the user approach. But from reading the above posts, it appears that their hands may be somewhat tied by the licensing agreement they have with the metadata supplier(s) - presumably what we know as ‘the record industry’.
As far as my memory goes, the only organisation that has managed to establish a level playing field in negotiations there is Apple and they have a fair bit more clout than Roon - so I’m not holding my breath for signifiant change in the short term!
I also agree with Tim. Most software packages for example Adobe allow you to run their software for free on a 2nd computer. Paying the full price twice seems harsh to me and certainly something I couldn’t afford right now.
I disagree with your comparison. Roon is a server/client system. Most servers are usually licensed one machine at a time and then add client licenses on top of that. Roon just happens to include unlimited free client licenses. You don’t pay extra for the IOS client, Android client, Mac client, PC client, the upcoming RAAT protocol to DIY a network appliance. You do pay for each server that these clients are going to link into.
You pay a very high premium for using roon compared to any other music player that I know of. I don’t think its much to ask for a free or discounted 2nd licence within the same home or for personal use.
I work from home and use Roon in my office. In the near feature I would like to use roon in the living room so I can enjoy the room experience on my main system. Like Tim I would like to use a Mac mini as its own server even though the content will be a replica of the one in the office. Don’t think this is a unreasonable request.
See right there is where we differ. Roon, to me, is not just a music player, it’s a content/meta-data database server that also plays music. I think the price is more than fair.
But, it is not like I don’t understand your position. I would like to have two licenses for various reasons and that becomes a cost/benefit analysis for me. As of now, I still haven’t pulled the trigger on a second license, the spouse’s need to use Roon instead of JRiver is still not that great. But, I know that people have done so.
Given that Roon offered a special time-limited discount 2nd license purchase; I don’t think that they will give everyone a free second license. I suspect that if they do anything it would be another limited time offer; which I would suggest as part of an 1st year Anniversary celebration.
[quote=“Paul, post:15, topic:7875”]
I work from home and use Roon in my office. In the near feature I would like to use roon in the living room so I can enjoy the room experience on my main system. Like Tim I would like to use a Mac mini as its own server even though the content will be a replica of the one in the office. Don’t think this is a unreasonable request.[/quote]
I assume you know this, but in order to use the proposed Mac Mini in your living room attached to your main system, all you have to do is to install Roon on the Mac and then run it as a CLIENT of your Roon Office server system…and running Roon in this manner does not cost extra?
And even outside of costs, there are a few advantages to running this way, rather than having two “Server” licences installed in the house
The biggest advantage is that any Additions & Edits you make in your “living room” system are immediately reflected on your Office system…whereas if you truly ran two ‘server’ systems, you would have to implement some kind of a 3rd party Sync process to keep the two systems concurrent for Content and Metadata
So unless I’m missing something, you can do what you want to do now, without the need for a 2nd [or 3rd or 4th licence]
Still looking for a DAC before I set this up in the living room so haven’t done much research into this - but I’m guessing in order to do this the music files would need to be accessed from either wifi or a ethernet connection between the 2 computers? Problem here is the connection isn’t great between then 2 rooms and was worried there would be degradation in sound and dropouts due to this poor connection.
