“Busy show miscommunication” indeed. This needs some clarification here.
ELAC DISCOVERY IS NOT ROON
As this keeps popping up over and over, I can make it very clear: ELAC Discovery is not Roon, nor can it be turned into Roon at any price.
The ELAC offering is powered by Roon’s library management engine, but does it’s own audio management. This means all the Roon audio offerings don’t automatically come into the ELAC products. The confusion is surely coming from the fact that it is currently being demoed with full Roon UI at these trade shows, and no one is doing crazy stuff like HQ Player or DSD in the demos.
Shipping, it will lack many Roon features out of the box (I mention a few earlier in this thread). The upgrade price will open up some of those features, but many will be unavailable even for an upgrade.
Much of our current work, and future roadmap has plans for that either don’t make sense for ELAC, or won’t come with ELAC’s offerings.
The ELAC Discovery is a great product, but it is not Roon in a box. It is it’s own ecosystem with benefits of its own.
Buy ELAC because it is a great product on its own. Do not buy ELAC to get Roon. Do not think that buying ELAC is a way to get Roon cheaply. ELAC provides a great audio system with a great user experience, and I believe that it’ll be one of the best experiences out of the box (once it is released). However, it is will not be Roon.
The marketing of this product is the hype-machine-gone-bad. It is such a great product on its own, I’m confused to why it’s being tied to Roon so much.
The only vendor selling the full Roon-in-box experience right now is SOtM and their device doesn’t come with a Roon membership. You still need that from Roon Labs. More of these types of manufacturers are coming up as well.