I’ve tried email, Tweeting them, and anything else I can think of. No response. I get the feeling they’re not coming back. It’s a shame… I never tried to connect my Vita to Roon until after the developer cut off date, so right now, it’s a paper weight.
Yeah big shame. Roon with Vita is excellent - i do not know if there is a better way to enjoy Roon on a big, touch screen that can HDMI to a TV as well. Hopefully they will be back.
Ooh thats a good idea. Not sure if Nativ has a side loading APK - i pretty sure it does - will have a look into that. The concern is that i do the update, it doesn’t work and i can’t get the old version back!
Argh! My Nativ fell over last night - has been working fine - is now saying it’s uncertified! @danny - is there any chance i can get it certified??
Has anyone figured if you can sideload the 1.8 APK on the Nativ Vita, and if so how it’s done?
I would be interested in an answer as well! (How to sideload the roon 1.8 APK on VITA?)
I registered my VITA to Roon v1.6. (With VITA on firmware 1.5 and 1.6), which worked really well - as supposed for a roon ready device. See my pics of the beautiful playscreens here. Since Roon 1.8, VITA is still hooked up to the Roon Core on my Nucleus, but marked „not certified“
.It should remain there over future updates.
Roon advised to not delete it in the settings; because I would not be able to register ist again … brave new world …
I took the plunge and bought a used Nativ Vita. It’s such a shame to hear that they may have been forced out of business possibly due to the pandemic. I hope someone picks up on the equipment and keeps it alive.
I’ve emailed Roon and asked if theres anything they can do to help me get Roon working on it (but as yet no response). While i don’t blame them in anyway for Nativ going out of business, surely it’s on their interests to give owners whatever support they can to keep them locked into Roon ?
I’m really hoping there is a way to sideload the Roon APK onto it. If not, am i right in thinking i’m going to end up limited to the Tidal app ?
Ok, so i managed to sideload the Roon Remote 1.8 (Build 764) APK onto the Nativ.
However there are now two issues.
- It’s running very slow
- The resolution seems wrong and images and writing are not clear, or take a long time to become clear.
Sideloading, can all be done on the Nativ while Roon 1.7 is installed. Here’s how i did it
- On the Vita try to install Roon 1.8 through the update. This will open the Play Store and tell you it’s not compatible.
- While Play Store is open, use the search tool to find a File Manager (i sued Filed by Google). Download and instal it.
- Next while still in Play Store search for Google Chrome or any other browser). Install and run it.
- while still in the Play Store, Open Chrome and search for the Roon 1.8 APK. Download it
- As far as i can tell you can’t access the apps from the normal Nativ interface, but you can use the Play Store to access installed apps. so once again try to update Roon and enter the play store.
- Search for your file manager, and Open it from within Play Store
- go to the downloads folder and install the Roon APK.
- once installed run Roon from the Nativ as normal
- now you have the same problems that i have, hopefully we can find a solution.
Don’t worry, if you then want to try something else you can delete Roon from the Nativ main screen and then reinstall the non-working version 1.7.
This is how things look within Roon preferences on the MAC
Here’s Roon 1.8 running on the Nativ.
Does this mean if I can get the Roon V1.6 DMG files (for MAC) then there’s a chance i can get functionality on my Vita ?
Only problem i guess is i’m running Big Sur, so probably older versions of Roon won’t be compatible.
I won´t try that for the moment since everything else is up and running
and I am mainly using VITA as a Roon endpoint, with Control via iPad
and the stream coming from my Nucleus.
Sometimes I am also using the music stored on the internal SSD of VITA.
But good to know, that sideloading works!
Yes, that is how I understood the Roon announcements.
Actually it should also work with Roon 1.7, because it was only with 1.8 that VITA was marked “uncertified” and they were warning not to delete it from the Roon Core´s settings.
Roon 1.6 Core no longer works. The servers to support metadata, search, tidal, etc are gone. The remotes for 1.6 are not forwards compatible to Cores running higher versions.
The uncertified thing had little to do with any specific version of software. We never released new software on the cutoff date
You can absolutely use the Vita as an endpoint when you have sideloaded 1.8. the sound is fine.
The issue is that the images are not clear (but then the whole App is not clear). I assume this is something within the ROON app itself, but it will need someone more technical than me to know.
Hi Danny, Is there anything that ROON can do to allow the use of V1.8 on the Nativ Vita ?
Clearly we aren’t going to get support from Nativ themselves, without being able to use the latest version i am left with two options.
- Don’t renew my Roon subscription and use the VITA with Tidal and my onboard music.
- Replace the Vita with something else…but there isn’t really a suitable alternative.
I’m not really inclined to buy something else (my wife would frankly kill me).
is the problem purely that the Vita is uncertified? or is there an issue with the Core/Remote stuff as well?
The problem is that the Roon App when side-loaded does not display correctly on the Nativ (see photo i posted earlier) and is laggy.
I’m struggling to understand why that would be so, since as you previously said it’s just an Android App.
Obviously i understand that this would be for Nativ to handle, but since there is no response at all from them, i’m asking for your experience to see if there is something that we can try. Roon works on the Nativ as an endpoint, it’s just
For information, Tidal, Apple Music, Audible, Mixcloud apps all work just fine the only app that is not rendering correctly and is running slowly is Roon, so i’m struggling to see that it’s an issue purely with the Nativ.
Do you know what version of Android they are running? At some point, that version is going to get too old for Roon to run on reasonably (it may have already done so). Software must be kept updated to stay relevant, especially if it is driven by data from the internet.
Hi Danny, yes it’s Android 5.1.1…so pretty old
we are working on a solution…
they had 1 issue left in their roon ready certification – a sync issue when playing between zones… maybe we can just look past that with a caveat given that no more of these devices will come into existence… its a compromise of the roon ready program, but probably the right thing to do.
the 1.8 issue we are going to look into by sideloading it… I’m pretty sure we have one here.
ok, there is a fix in the next build that may impact the whole graphics issue and the extreme performance degradation – can you try and let us know when its out?
It’s possible that this device is also either running out of RAM or storage and we are getting some type of swapping or delays. For example, we are seeing our image atlas taking 13 seconds to load, and we have a very slow 7" Amazon tablet can do this like less than 150ms.
I’d try to reboot it and start roon from the start and make sure other things arent running… maybe that will have an impact.
It’s really unfortunate, but I’d look into replacing that thing… it was a beautiful idea, but clearly not executed well.
For example, just did a quick google for the GPU in it and I’m getting results from 2012. Yikes. That said, we run “ok” on stuff from that era, so there is more going on here than just old poorly performant hardware.