I hate that you so accurately describe our current reality, but you’re missing that this is a cultural swing of the pendulum. Using the word ‘retard’ pejoratively is Politically Incorrect, but not as incorrect as imposing your music on others. The current culture is to contract, to not impose. And I don’t think that’s for always. And while I am a pessimist, those crappy little mono bluetooth speakers are too silly to last.
As well, the music industry is highly fractured and there aren’t really any artists so talented that everyone listens to them, across cultural and racial and generational divides. In 1980 one could blast their boombox with a reasonable expectation that others might enjoy your radio station. Much much more so than now. I hope we return to that quality of music. So popular everyone likes it.
I can’t be the only one waiting for something to supplant Hip Hop. It seems several decades past its expiration date, and I’d like to hear a new generation of drummers and guitar players bloom. So my expectation is the gravity will drag the pendulum back. Unless of course we are all pushing shopping carts around a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Sadly these days, I would bet more on the later.
There are genuine Market forces, and there are artificial manufactured markets. Don’t confuse the two.
5.1 surround sound systems and all their spawn are artificial crap thrown together by a conglomeration of corporations scamming people who want to watch movies into being forced to spend a couple of hundred extra for crap that is totally unnecessary to a decent stereo system. (They deliberately further this scam by providing horrible down conversion to the stereo outputs they still have to include in their hardware). In an ideal world it would have collapsed as badly as 3D theaters have, but a cultural value got attached somehow to the crappy sound of distorted car audio speakers, and it made subwoofers trendy.
I think we are saying the same thing. It’s easy for people to justify spending more money on Home Theater because it’s easy to understand. It also comes with the requisite bragging rights - “Check out my fancy pants new 9.4.6 speaker system with a 100” inch Oled TV”
Followed by “You mean, you spent all that money, and only got 2 speakers, a gramophone, and some garden hoses? And wait, you’re telling me, it didn’t even come with a subwoofer? Ha ha “
This is not a scam. People who watch a lot of action movies on their big screen TV’s enjoy having the sounds coming from all directions. It’s an enjoyable experience and has nothing to do with listening to stereo music on a high quality stereo system. They are two totally different experiences, both enjoyable.
I took the time to record the bugs I have on the iPad. It’s a good example about my experience.
For information, I unplugged/plugged the DAC few times.
And you can see the application crashing, some issue with the size of the application.
I have to say I massively disagree with this post.
I’ve been using Roon on trial now for just over a week and have so far installed it on: a windows PC, a Mac laptop, a NAS computer running unRaid; the controller on two Android phones and an iPad and played music through a computer, Sonos One and Nvidia Shield connected to a TV, which is connected to a hifi. My system is a bit janky but works for me.
I have to say I am absolutely delighted with this software and have never used anything that has just worked so seemlessly with all my devices. I’m quite frankly impressed how everything connects with almost zero user input and how fast the software is across all devices.
I have tried lots of other free music software in the last few months (quarantine project) and will HAPPILY be paying the yearly cost for this as it just solves so many issues and works so damn well.
That’s not even touching on the features that the software has that also make it stand out from the crowd.
I can honestly say I wish I had switched to Roon years ago.
That has been my experience as well. Worked will enough on my desktop with all wireless connections that I had to jump in with the lifetime subscription. Moved to a NUC/Rock setup with all wired connection, and it is pretty much perfect for me. Enjoy.
Sadly I’m just not in a financial position where I can spend that much on a piece of software. The annual subscription alone is quite pricey for me, but I want to support the developers and its a great product.
Pretty well known from prior posts Roon plans to terminate them at some point. Search the forum threads - there should be a couple of threads on it. It was quite the lively discussion when the price jumped to $699 from $499. Roon management made it crystal clear lifetime subscriptions were not going to be a permanent thing, or something they wanted more of.
Why? Because a good number of people are going to complain that they were not given a warning before the lifetime subscription option was removed. They will say it is not fair and that they should have a chance to buy the lifetime subscription even though it is no longer available. They will say how terrible Roon is and that they don’t care about their customers. Tantrums will be thrown!
This very conversation shows people have been informed. The strategy has been clearly laid out By Roon in an extensive post.
Also Roon were accommodating to people on a trial at the time of the lifetime price rise.
Roon need annual subscribers to ensure a finance stream going forward and also to keep them on track as otherwise people may not renew. It’s a win win situation and music services are not free.
