Roon Ready Certification

Sued by who? UL? Yes… perhaps. But UL doesn’t walk into your house and disable all of your non-certified gear because you, the customer, unknowingly purchased non-compliant hardware.

Look, it comes down to doing “what’s right” (enforcing your legal rights) to doing “the right thing” (not inducing harm to your customers as a result). Potentially disabling equipment that has been ok in Roon up to now, in order to resolve an intra-industry dispute is weaponizing customers to apply pressure on the non-compliant manufacturers. I think that’s a pretty extreme tactic. Roon claims some degree of industry leadership but can find no other way to resolve this matter? Really?

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Why do you then use it?

What would the device then show up as in the settings menu? If not “Roon Ready” nor “Roon tested” then what?

@Geoff_Coupe, the link from Settings -> Terms and Conditions no longer works.

Yes, but as you no doubt understand, the manufacturers are using ‘Roon Ready’ as a selling point, i.e. riding on Roon’s coattails, but not playing by Roon’s rules.

That’s really the genesis of this whole ■■■■ storm.

It’s been reported.

Here you go. Pi2AES is running RoonBridge (via Ropieee). Linn is Roon Tested but not Roon Ready.

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And bringing Roon lots of new subscribers as a result.

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This could work out the other way round, too. Even if the Roon SDK would only very rarely be affected by Roon software updates, there is no guarantee that this will be so forever. And I wouldn’t trust any hardware vendor to support in all future any updates to the Roon software on their devices, if it ever were necessary.

When I put together my system I went out of my way to put together my custom Roon Core server and connect it to a DAC that never ever will be Roon tested, never mind Roon Ready certified. And guess what - it just works and really nice to boot!

Today here a lot of unfair and silly arguments have been made, and very few acknowledge that ultimately hardware vendors are at fault by not complying with a licensing agreement they have signed with Roon. They are happily pushing their non-compliant products to Roon users, making false claims about the status of Roon Ready certification. That’s not nice, and we should support Roon for pointing this out, for our own sake.

I would love to know how many sales some hardware vendors would be missing if their potential buyers had to rely on their own mostly unfit streaming apps.

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Indeed, and why it will take a lot now for Chord to regain my trust as consumer.

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Obviously, I don’t know all the in’s and out’s of this situation, but I think it should have been handled differently and better by Roon. Customers should have never been put in the middle of this. Roon and their business partners could have solved this without creating another cluster mishap for their customers. Customer focused companies just don’t do this. I love the Roon software and hardware, but not some of their management decision making skills.

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Wayback machine will have it

Agree. What is RoonLab’s goal? I would hope to get the most music and the best audio experience into the hands of the most people. Is this choice pursuing that goal?

It could be argued that to get the “best experience” they need to make this choice? OK, but is this right when the software only comes in a 1 year or lifetime contract (one could also argue even monthly if it was even an option), and people who are in that current contract can no longer use the software due to that choice?

Could a choice best for the customer to be able to use Roon until their contract is up, and then make the choice how to move forward? At that point, the user can take it up with their hardware manufacturer if that manufacturer indeed advertised their component as being Roon-Ready. They gave manufacturers a year to decide, why not the paying customer?

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We users can do something. A large part of my recent purchases have been driven by the ability to work seamlessly with Roon. If a manufacturer is lying to me, I want to know it. What I can do is, tell the manufacturer I am going to purchase something that is compatible with how I want to listen to my music. Be it Roon Ready, or Roon tested.

As Roon has grown in popularity manufacturers know that Roon capability is a selling factor. I imagine most play ball, but there are some cheaters out there. For those that advertise Roon Ready, but are not, they are actually maligning Roon, because if the product is Roon Ready and does not work properly the perception is Roon stinks. When in turn it is the manufacturer who stinks. If I were Roon and based on a subscription model I would not want a perception of me stinking… Just my thoughts.

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Mostly agree, but according to Roon they had been working with the manufacturers since 2018. What else could they do to protect their technology?

So, Roon must have recently given the device vendors a clue as to Roon’s ‘nuclear’ option.

I still use Roon because the functionality just outweighs the irritation it causes me. But only just.

I pay for the use of it and I pay the yearly fee. If they want to keep receiving my money, they will have to make sure that the irritation doesn’t outweigh the functionality and they’ll have to cross their fingers that someone else doesn’t launch a comparable piece of software that is less picky about the transport protocol.

The moment someone launches device independent player software wlth a half decent search function, good queue management and Tidal integration alongside local music files, Roon risks losing me as a customer.

I could do with a bit less 'tude from Roon as well.

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Ah, but here’s the thing: the equipment has been working fine in Roon! So why disable something if it works, the customer is happy, but the only problem is that the manufacturer has claimed the product to be “Roon Ready” as opposed to simply stating that it will work with Roon.

I agree, Roon has the right to enforce it’s licensing agreements. But is has made a mess when it first allowed non-certified hardware to operate, signed up new subscribers as a result, who are happy with the system, and then decides several years later to start pulling the plug to rectify an issue with the manufacturer.

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You said it better than I did in my numerous posts. Follow the money Roon and don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

NOT if they have a poor experience with a ‘Roon-Ready’ streamer, that isn’t really…

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People always have a choice. There’s always a work around. That is spending money like we do for better sound. If I had a lifetime membership, and I do, and I lost hope about this(unlikely) then I would buy something I know that works. We’re tearing our hair out and all we get is bald.

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