Or perhaps Maeistro has only one real intent, perhaps similar to now saying previously touted tube equipment does not sound as good as our new solid state products. Just thoughts for the curious.
Having actually read it, itās pretty pathetic even for him. Makes me really wonder if he had finally went off the deep end and whether Samsungās lawyers might have something to say about itā¦
But that doesnāt really have anything with the music (for playback) per se. It might be a different approach to discovery. Or, most likely in this case, it is Uncle Paul hearing a new word that apparently sells very well right now (āAIā) and running away with it, without paying any more attention as to what it actually means than he does to laws oh physics or performance of his own gearā¦
But that has always been very transparent and completely user-selectable in Roon. And unless either the DAC itself, or that Maestro thing implements proper DRC internally, Roon still has a (very big in most real setups) advantage of allowing for proper room correction.
Iām actually in agreement and not against what has been said.
What I was trying to highlight is positioning: If Maestro tries to compete head-on with Roon on DSP and feature depth, itāll likely always be catching up. But it doesnāt have to.
Thereās a clear segment of users who donāt need that level of complexity. In my case, with a Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 or an RME ADI-2 Pro FS, software DSP is basically redundant. Why? Itās already handled in my hardware. And I would expect more DACs/amps to go in that direction. So, the user-group might evolve. And hence, scaling kicks in!
For that audience, Maestro could be a strong alternative, especially if it leans into simplicity rather than feature parity.
The real opportunity, in my view, is AI-driven curation: smarter discovery, contextual recommendations, and a more adaptive listening experience.
However, if Maestro might become a strong Roon competition, it will be for the benefits us as their customers!
Just-my-2-centsā![]()
Given the rather thin factual information PS Audio currently offers, what about audio sources or formats an endpoint/renderer does not support natively? They state such devices shall fetch the data directly, without any evil in between ![]()
Follow the marketing trajectory.
Just in case you mised it ![]()
Maestro delivers sound that Roon, Audirvana, and JRiver simply cannot match
Every platform pulling from Qobuz delivers the same audio data. The bits are identical. But the system behavior surrounding those bitsāthe topology, the processing layers, the delivery modelāis not
The rest of Paul McGowan argumnets can be found of the website.
Torben
In case you missed it ![]()
āWe donāt touch the audio streamā
And the difference between that and Qobuz Connect which also just lets the endpoint deal with the stream?
Also, why pitch āWe donāt touch the audio streamā and in the same sales pitch, throw out another option to completely touch the audio stream (Prism).

The only processing I consider is Volume Levelling occasionally , as a headphone listener I donāt like surprises
Iām just a simple lad, just use Qobuz on my Linn DSM, iPhone and cast to Echo. Iāve no local music and just stream from the internet.
Did look at getting Roon, hence why on this forum, but was advised that would be no benefit to me, the way I stream. But I love the Jazz Music thread as it suggests new artists to explore.
Iām not really sure what Maestro is or does. It just seems another level of software to get in the way.
DGā¦.
One box is the futureā¦.. enjoy the Jazz
Trialed just for fun⦠lots of bugs⦠interface rubbish.
Roon rocks!
Absurd. Heād be capable of trying to sell ice cream to a Lapp.
Makes me feel my poor data has been physically assaulted by Roon. ![]()
100% agree as discovery - especially ālow-effortā discovery - is one of the areas that Roon really struggles with.
It seems Maestro answers a completely different (and smaller in scale) question than Roon does. The way itās described it is a mere curation overlay put onto Qobuz, enabling playlists and AI suggestions. Irrespective of the beta testing experience
I am not sure this has a sustainable place in the market place. If Qobuz upped its game and added more/better AI driven discovery features to the Qobuz app, people wonāt pay an extra subscription to Maestro, but use Qobuz app with Qobuz Connect instead.
Quite the opposite , whatever āpoor dataā you have embedded in your audio files is quite safe Roon NEVER writes to your audio files , its read only and stored in its proprietary database.
It is one of the snags of Roon, should you choose to part ways with Roon all that data is lost, hence why most users advise external metadata editing back to the audio files before you import into Roon. That way your metadata edits are visible to all other players.
Iām pretty sure it was a joke based on the PS Audio claim of ānot touchingā the stream ![]()
How does Maestro connect with the streaming engine?
