Easy to say – hard to do.
I was a coder for 30+ years. As more functionality is added to an app over time, and parts of the base code age, simple fixes become harder and harder to come by. Eventually – without a complete rewrite – nothing is “simple to fix”.
I’m an engineer by trade and my decisions are driven by experience, facts and data. Worked in the Medical Device industry for almost 35 years (started at 23 years old) so that’s the industry that I know inside out. During this time I worked with several start-up companies that ended being acquired by big corporations (top 10). The story was the same for each one. They promised nothing was going to change, that the value was in the people and culture….blahblahblah (almost like a carbon copy). One good thing, we did get compensated generously and fair, and I’m hoping all Roon employees received some compensation (bonus/stocks options) too. But, everything else went to Schiit.
A year and half later people started leaving or were let go.
That being said, I really hope that in this case the outcome is different. I love Roon and will hate to start looking for something different. 100 % understand people’s overwhelming pessimism.
Trying to navigate the middle between pessimism and optimism. 
Voicing out your anxiety is one solution to venting your negative feelings, but you should know that if you don’t do it in moderation, your negative feelings will never be satisfied.
OK, probably no need to speculate. We’ll find out soon enough.
Most streamers support a whole range of options , DLNA, Airplay Chromecast , Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify etc as well as Roon Ready
I am thinking of my CA CXN and Naim Uniti Atom. I have an up to date JRiver library feeding DLNA.
So I am covered anyway BUT the apps that can control any of these options be they the streaming service or the hardware are not a patch on Roon as we know it now,
I am annual and renew on Boxing Day , I’ll just let it run by next year it will have shaken itself out which ever way.
I am chilled , even in 30 deg heat here 
There’s definitely something going on with audio at Samsung:
Whatever happened to the Speaker Lab in California ? It was a Harman setup designing hi end sound bars
I have a HW950 5.1 soundbar which while not hi fi is acceptable for background music, albeit DLNA
I think they binned it
These guys? Seems someone is doing something with it in Seattle now. I was in Southern California in the 70’s , actually I’m in SoCal right now. Marantz and JBL were SoCal companies as well.
Looks like it’s still around as Samsung Research, it spawned a range of better than avaerage sound bars and auxiliary speakers under the Harman banner
…and what about car owners don’t own a Roon Core? This scenario would only scale in case the Roon Core moves into the cloud. Not sure, if that is the secret sauce behind the acquisition;-)
If you like chocolate, try Sara Lee Ultra Chocolate ice cream
Danny did say at one point that if they ever are sure it’s the end, they will put out a final version that will allow people to keep using it locally.
Yeah, but that was always going to be crippled in the best case when they stop paying metadata licenses, and by now with more depending on the cloud it probably wouldn’t be something you’d want to keep using, I guess.
Maybe it’s a coincidence but my Roon app quit working the day this takeover was announced.
I do indeed like chocolate. I like garbage and actual chocolate. One can’t eat the real deal all the time.
I also adore ice cream. Especially proper ice cream.
Thanks.
But the Sllimdevices software still works and is being improved. They allow outsiders to keep it going.
My SBT still going strong.
The Roon team started around 2004 making the Sooloos streamer platform. It was revolutionary at the time.
They sold to Meridian around 2008.
They went on to develop Roon around 2015. Again a revolutionary product.
They sold to the Harman group in 2023.
Here’s my prediction: Some time in the future, the geniuses that made the products we’ve come to love will come up with something new. I predict it’s going to be called iYoohoo, because Danny likes names with double o in it and he’s also going to use the new name to finally come out of the closet.
It will be brain based. No more mucking around with hardware. It’ll go straight to the brain, bypassing even your eyes and ears. It’ll be multi channel, virtual 3D and controlled by thought only.
Anything less than that and I’ll be disappointed.
Joking aside. These guys have done nothing in the past 20+ year but surprise the audio community with class leading products. It really wouldn’t surprise me if in ten years time we look back at this acquisition and think; Roon? yeah, it was good at the time, but I’m so glad we now have iYoohoo.
ARC works fine for me, and I live in a rural area and only have access to ADSL 100 up, 10 down.
So it is some other issue.
If they want to end the lifetime subscription but give us a version of Roon that will continue working without updates, I 'm fine with that.
Before Roon I used JRiver. They had frequent updates that cost about $20 a pop, but older versions kept working. If you didn’t see any need for the new and improved features, you didn’t have to pay.
That model is okay with me.
They could make a Roon version like LMS material (graphical UI version where you can display album and artist information - and integration of the streaming services to your library. The album/artist information is from free sources).
Not as nicely displayed and integrated as in Roon, but there, nonetheless. It doesn’t cost a penny, and it works.