New Roon article/video on DigitalAudioReview.Net

Nice discussion on Roon, Roon Ready, and Roon Certified Devices.

At CES, Roon Labs’ promotional push was for Roon Ready – further decentralisation for listeners wanting to move Roon’s playback engine away from “the electrical firestorm” (Vandermeer’s words) of a music server and onto a low/er noise streamer which, when Roon Readied, behaves as a Roon Endpoint i.e. playback device. The server sends digital audio to the Roon Endpoint over the network using Roon’s own hi-res PCM- and DSD-capable transmission protocol but is clocked by the latter.

The next step, already in its early stages, is to allow third party manufacturers to host the library management portion of Roon on their own music servers – that’s Roon Core.

Mark Jenkins of New Zealand’s Antipodes Audio has already signified that he intends his music servers to be both Roon Ready and to host Roon Core; BYO mobile device for control, no other computer required. That way we get the best of both worlds: the superior sound quality of Jenkins’ servers married to Roon’s class-leading interface.

Roon Core already sits on SoTM’s sMS-1000SQ Windows Edition, which according to the South Korean company is “The world’s first Windows OS based server to combine with AudiophileOptimizer and Roon”.

Link to interview

Short version of the comments from the video Roon Ready - Network Audio. Roon Certified - USB audio.

One thing of note at one of the gents, sorry wasn’t sure who was who, mentions that around this summer time we might be able to expect products from ~35 different manufacturers. Great news. I hope there are plenty on display in Newport.

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Exciting times indeed. RoonReady is such a simple plug and play solution that it really does threaten to break out the market for Roon beyond digital hi-fi geeks (not that I don’t appreciate hanging out with you guys :grinning: ).

My Aries updated its firmware and it was just “there” as a selectable Networked zone in Roon. No setup required. I felt vaguely cheated. How can I justify the hours spent poring over digital audio boards, trying out different settings, mansplaining my latest signal processing learning to my girlfriend, if any bozo can do it ? Fortunately there’s still HQP …

Edit: @danny - The distributed telecommuting model used by the devs is fascinating of itself. When was the last time the Nine (shades of LotR) were in the same room together ?

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:laughing:

@AgDev01: Rob Darling on the left, Enno Vandermeer on the right.

Edit: @danny - The distributed telecommuting model used by the devs is fascinating of itself. When was the last time the Nine (shades of LotR) were in the same room together ?

About a year ago, we got everyone together and announced the formation of the company to the team. That is the last time we were all in the same place.

Actually, Rob wasn’t there that day–he came on a bit later.

So the real answer is never.

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