September, 9th , we received an official communication from Roon HQ which informs us that starting September 21th the devices without a full Roon certification will no longer work once disabled, that is, they will no longer be usable because it will be not possible to re-enable them.
Regarding this, we must point out that:
- We started the Roon RAAT program procedure for the LinQ last year, at an advanced stage of the product development.
- During this whole period, no reminders or special notices were sent to us. We were therefore surprised by such a short deadline set by Roon, and communicated at only 10-12 days to expiration.
- We should ask ourselves: is it possible that several well-respected manufacturers that have placed non-certified devices on the market are all “offending manufacturers”, as defined by Roon?
What is surely true is that these offending manufactures have been useful, very useful, when it came to start the Roon business.
This week we received some reports from Roon Staff about the progress of certification:
>"John found that the device only has the Roon Ready card installed. We will need the other cards in order to test the behavior of the device when a customer switches between sources."
>"There are few elements of testing that are exclusive “roon” behavior. We will need to have all of the card options installed in order to begin testing."
>"If the NAA module has not shipped, we can test with just the UPNP for now, but we will need to see the NAA module when it ships.
>When we have the UPNP module, we can follow up and fill you in on the status of the test queue."
Today aqua communicated to Roon Labs its decision to stop the LinQ ongoing certification process at their laboratory.
LinQ therefore will not be a “Roon Ready” product.
Why did aqua make this decision?
This happened following a series of considerations that we briefly summarize below.
Obtaining the “Roon Ready” certification requires that the product conforms to certain technical requirements.
LinQ has already received excellent feedback from customers, various reviews in magazines, online publications, and 3 international Awards.
What we consider an insurmountable obstacle are the constraints that Roon Labs places on the structure and operation of the device.
Adhering to these constraints would mean giving up the concept of total modularity and interchangeability of the various dedicated modules, which represents the uniqueness and the strength point of the LinQ streamer.
Suffice it to say that in case aqua develops a new module, the LinQ certification procedure should be repeated, with the possibility of a negative conclusion.
Modularity and easy upgradeability instead have always been part of aqua’s DNA.
Furthermore, an essential point for us: from a company philosophy point of view, aqua cannot accept that its creativity, and the evolution of its products must be subject to the control of an external body, which has its own objectives and strategies.
aqua will continue the development of LinQ, using the currently available and the future streaming technologies, always with the sole objective of the best results.
Of course, LinQ can always be used with the UPnP modules, HQPlayer NAA and with all future network protocols we are developing for the world of streaming.
Our thinking is that it makes no sense to follow the bureaucratic and static path that Roon has taken.
In fact, the streaming sector is constantly evolving both from the technological point of view and from that of service providers.